Meghan Markle and the uncomfortable truth about Britain

I’m not defending Harry and Meghan. But I think they deserve some credit, for they have put the British character under the spotlight as never before in our times.

Of course, it’s mainly Meghan who has done this. Through being boldly herself, she has raised the question of who we are. How are we different from the Californian culture she belongs to, which is the dominant form of western culture? In some ways it’s obvious – we have a monarchy for a start. But she has exposed a lot of the underlying stuff that makes us different. And she forces us to ask: can we affirm this stuff? Can we defend it? Do we like who we are?

It seems that Meghan was not really aware of marrying into a different culture from her own. In a way, the weirdness and magic of monarchy obscured the issue of national cultural difference. She assumed British culture was much the same as her own Californian culture; that it was a quaint, old-fashioned version of it, with some dusty cobwebs that she was well placed to clear away.