Heroic British Moments

As readers of popular media may have noticed, there’s been a recent trend for lists of historical events: best Briton, worst king etc. Now, a UK newspaper called The Times has run a poll to find “the most heroic moment in Britain’s history”. The inspiration for this wasn’t some jingoistic chest beating (unusually), but a quote by Russian writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, in which he referred to the British decision to oppose Hitler and declare war in 1939 before stating: “England chose the moral course and experienced and demonstrated to the world perhaps the most brilliant and heroic period in its history.” The poll, which garnered several thousand votes, agreed with Solzhenitsyn’s sentiment, with 55% voting for the Battle of Britain, an episode in the Second World War when British planes fought for air supremacy with German forces, and 20.8% voting for the decision to declare war itself. You had to look to third place to find something not connected with WW2, in this case defeating the Spanish Armada.