DREAMS FIGURED PROMINENTLY IN the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. The first speaker of the night was Kenneth Branagh, channelling both Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Shakespeare's Caliban: "The clouds methought would open, and show riches. Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked, I cried to dream again!" A section was devoted to children's bedtime nightmares. Rowan Atkinson lapsed into a dream during his cameo. And hallucinatory spectacles such as the Queen jumping out of a helicopter with James Bond made 900 million viewers around the world wonder if they were the ones dreaming.
Ten years on, the whole ceremony feels more dreamlike than ever. This was Britain as a rich, diverse, multicultural, imaginative, inventive nation comfortable with its identity and capable of reconciling its contradictions. We were traditional yet modern. We were powerful yet caring. We were orderly yet anarchic. We had a vast back catalogue of world-changing culture. We knew how to put on a good show.
Jonathan Coe summed up the feelings of many in his 2018 novel Middle England, which devotes a whole chapter to various characters watching the ceremony, including Doug, the sceptical journalist (who writes for, er, the Guardian): "What he felt while watching it were the stirrings of an emotion he hadn't experienced for years - had never really experienced at all, perhaps ... Yes, why not come straight out and admit it, at this moment he felt proud, proud to be British, proud to be part of a nation which had not only achieved such great things but could now celebrate them with such confidence and irony and lack of self-importance."
This story is from the July 22, 2022 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the July 22, 2022 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
No 298 Bean, cabbage and coconut-milk soup
Deep, sweet heat. A soup that soothes and invigorates simultaneously.
Cottage cheese goes viral: in reluctant praise of a food trend
I was asked recently which food trends I think will take over in 2025.
I'm worried that my teenage son is in a toxic relationship
A year ago, our almost 18-year-old son began seeing a girl, who is a year older than him and is his first \"real\" girlfriend.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
A roundup of the best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror
Dying words
The Nobel prize winner explores the moment of death and beyond in a probing tale of a fisher living in near solitude
Origin story
We homo sapiens evolved and succeeded when other hominins didn't-but now our expansionist drive is threatening the planet
Glad rags to riches
Sarcastic, self-aware and surprisingly sad, the first volume of Cher's extraordinary memoir mixes hard times with the high life
Sail of the century
Anenigmatic nautical radio bulletin first broadcast 100 years ago, the Shipping Forecast has beguiled and inspired poets, pop stars and listeners worldwide
How does it feel?
A Complete Unknown retells Bob Dylan's explosive rise, but it als resonates with today's toxic fame and politics. The creative team expl their process-and wha the singer made of it all
Jane Austen's enduring legacy lies in her relevance as a foil for modern mores
For some, it will be enough merely to re-read Persuasion, and thence to cry yet again at Captain Wentworth's declaration of utmost love for Anne Elliot.
