‘The country of my birth has lost its heart’: Miriam Margolyes on how to fix broken Britain
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- Miriam Margolyes, now 85, declares that the "country of my birth has lost its heart," describing the present as "threatening, hostile and unwelcoming" and saying her generation's postwar assumptions have given way to the "worst time yet"
- Margolyes cites specific signs of national decline: the Archbishop of Canterbury's resignation, north London Jews afraid to wear Magen David necklaces outside their homes, free speech and the Post Office "disappearing," and the US recast as "an enemy"
- Margolyes warns that "evil oligarchs and their influence stalk the world" and that politicians, news outlets and media run a "relentless and divisive campaign of fearmongering and misinformation"
- Margolyes uses jokes about Welsh, Scottish, Irish and English relations to argue the English are "baffled" by hostility while "prolonging it with their arrogant attitudes," and catalogues international nicknames — Brittunculi (found on a tablet at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall), Poms, Rooinek, soutpiel, Limeys, Inselaffen, Les rosbifs — to illustrate Britain's unpopularity abroad
- Margolyes argues the English "excel at obfuscation" and are "masters at avoiding the truth," advising readers to "speak as you find," stay away from liars, and "debunk the deceits and sort the sheep from the goats"
- Margolyes reveals she stood as a Tory candidate at age 14 in an Oxford High School election in May 1955, but says she has since "swung left," unlike most former Conservatives who have "swelled the ranks of the current Deform party"
- Margolyes invokes historian Eric Hobsbawm's claim that "today is the great age of historical mythology" to argue Britain must face its empire's "painful moments and terrible decisions" rather than treat history as "the propaganda of the victors"
Why it matters: Margolyes writes from a position of cultural prominence — saying she is "never richer or more in demand" at 85 — to publicly diagnose British decline and demand honesty about the country's imperial record. Her mix of personal authority, anti-establishment jokes and explicit political positioning (calling the US "an enemy" and former Tories the "Deform party") gives the essay weight well beyond celebrity commentary, placing it inside the broader British self-examination debate she invokes through Hobsbawm.
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