From Austen to Zed

The game's afoot!

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Could the flight from O’Hare to Heathrow have been any more British? Between Sherlock Holmes and an England versus Netherlands Cricket match playing for the duration of the flight, it was as British as a British Airways flight could be

For the record, 221b Baker Street is merely the beginning and certainly not the end of my deeply rooted love of things British.

In fact, somewhere between “Come, Watson!” and “Elementary!”, my pre-Oxford Anglophile list has grown substantially from A to Z:

Thus, my current A to Z list of favorite British things:

Jane Austen, Jeffrey Archer, Nancy Astor, Alice in Wonderland, Aston Martin
Blenheim, Barbour, Brasenose, Sarah Brightman, Burberry, the BBC, Tom Brown
Cliveden, Winston Churchill, Cadbury, Chariots of Fire, Coldplay
Dickens, Doc Martin, Double Decker (buses and chocolate bars), Sir A.C. Doyle
Elizabeths: I, II, Bennett, Barrett Browning
Football, Fish and Chips, Ian Fleming, Foyle’s War, C.S. Forester
Greenwich, golf, the Globe, the Guns of Navarone
Harrods, Hamleys, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, Hampton Court, Horatio Hornblower
Inspectors Morse and Lewis
Jeeves (and Wooster), Jaguar, Jane Eyre, jam/jelly (and scones!)
King’s Cross (platform 9 ¾ of course!), Keats, Rudyard Kipling
London, Liverpool, Lovejoy, Hugh Laurie
Miss Marple, May Day, A.A. Milne, Christopher Marlowe, Muggles, The Man in the Brown Suit, Lee Mead, Sir Thomas More, British Museum, My Fair Lady
Nottingham, Sir Isaac Newton, Nicholas Nickleby
Oxford, George Orwell, Oliver Twist
St. Paul’s, Paddington (bear and station), Peter Pan, Piccadilly, Hercule Poirot, Portobello Market
Queen… all of them (the royals, the guards, the band…), Quidditch
Rhodes, Right oh! J.K. Rowling, Land Rover, Robin Hood
Salisbury, Shakespeare, Scones, Sherwod Forest, Scarlet Pimpernel, Spy (BBC), Selfridges
Tea, the Tube, Thames, Tennyson, the Tate, Margaret Thatcher
Union Jack, Umbro
Victoria, Jules Verne, the Verve, Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Viola (Twelfth Night)
Wellies, P.G. Woodhouse, Christopher Wren, Dr. Watson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, 27a Wimpole Street, Wordsworth, What ho!
X Factor, Exeter college
Yorkshire (city, terrier, pudding), Yorkie bars You-Know-Who
Zulu


May my alphabet continue to lengthen with every adventure.

The game’s afoot,

ej

Sunday/Monday, April 11/12, 2010
Somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean