You don't need to be in Britain to discover our nation's riches

REGULAR readers of this blog have been asking me in recent weeks why I only seem to be writing about my travels in far flung countries like India, Dubai and Oman. If this is my chosen blogging subject matter then shouldn’t it be called ‘beingabroad’ or something similar? The simple answer is: no – ‘beinginbritain’ is a title that’s here to stay Allow me to explain….

Since setting up this blog, my emphasis has always been on discovering more about British heritage. I’ve toured our beautiful island and written about places in London, Manchester, Shropshire and the like. But Britain is about so much more than the cities, towns and villages stretching from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

Over the last 500 years we have, as a nation, had a major influence in numerous countries on all four corners of the globe. Take India, for example, where I visited just a few months ago. It was the British that brought the railways, the bureaucracy and the current schooling system. Walking around somewhere like Mumbai (formerly Bombay) today, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are actually in Manchester: the Victorian Gothic buildings with towering spires, have a remarkable resemblance.

There will be other opportunities to debate what sort of impact our colonial travels had on foreign populations. Anyone with even a limited grasp of history will know that the British didn’t always behave themselves when they took possession of foreign lands; there are probably literally thousands of books on the bloodshed that the British unleashed on local populations in most of the world’s continents at some point or another.

Here though my argument is that to discover all of this colonial history you need to travel to the places where the British had influence. You get a far greater impression and understanding of what it was like to like under the British Raj than you do by simply walking around the India galleries of the British Museum in London.

And a trip to the Indian subcontinent also continues the narrative of what happened after the British left by telling the story of the hardships for many today. Many live in slums, with no access to clean water and proper sanitation. Children grow up without a proper education and instead toil away in countless cottage-scale factories recycling goods for foreign international companies.

In summary, I’ve not deviated from my favourite subject of ‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness’ in recent months. I’ve just taken the opportunity to go abroad and delve further into the backstory of what makes our island such a special place. I’m now back in Bristol and can’t wait to bring you my thoughts from where British history began. It’s going to be a great summer.