In praise of British strawberries

Ask a foreigner to name the fruit that above all others epitomises their image of Britain, and it will surely be the strawberry. It is less a fruit than an icon. Redolent of royalty: not just for its role jam sandwiching together a Victoria Sponge but for its colour too, as patriotically red as the tunics of The Queen’s Guards. To eat bowls of strawberries and cream at Wimbledon. To partake of a punnet on a park picnic. These things are as quintessentially British as tea and queuing.

What is it that is so evocative about strawberries? They are of course synonymous with summer, and they have about them something of the match tea, of outdoor eating and of holidays. There is nostalgia too: growing up without strawberry jam sandwiches was surely no childhood at all. They feel like a very egalitarian fruit: while a few posh kids might grow up with a taste for blueberries and loganberries, everyone knows what a strawberry tastes like.