I made a joke about the British naming everything curry and apparently disturbed the Empire. 😂 So let me restore diplomatic relations. As a Dutchman, I genuinely have enormous admiration for British history and culture. Few countries have left such an unmistakable mark on the world. Britain gave us Shakespeare and Tolkien, Newton and Darwin, the Magna Carta and a parliamentary tradition that influenced governments far beyond its shores. Its sailors crossed and charted oceans, its engineers covered the country in canals and railways, and the Industrial Revolution that began there transformed much of the world. Then there is the Britain I simply know and admire. Old pubs with beams that have survived several changes of dynasty. Village churches surrounded by crooked gravestones. Sunday roasts, football grounds, country houses, seaside towns, eccentric local traditions and people who can turn discussing the weather into a perfectly respectable conversation. And yes, the British Empire was complicated and sometimes brutal, and it deserves to be studied honestly. The Dutch hardly have the luxury of pretending our own overseas history was conducted by a travelling charity. Even then, I am still proud of that part of my history, and I think you should be proud of yours too. British history is also filled with moments I deeply admire. Standing against Nazi Germany in 1940, when much of Europe had fallen, is certainly one of them. The courage and endurance of ordinary British people during the Blitz still command respect here across the North Sea. Our countries have traded, competed, fought several wars and occasionally stolen each other's ships. We have a complicated history, but in our small corner of Europe there are only a handful of nations whose history and achievements give me the same sense of pride and kinship I feel towards my own. And that gets to the reason I write about history and culture in the first place. I believe these things matter. For years I have watched politicians on both the left and right allow parts of our cultures, traditions and identities to be weakened. I am conservative, and I have no intention of quietly watching the culture I inherited disappear in the name of whichever ideology happens to be fashionable. But spending every day fighting strangers online achieves very little. It mostly pushes us further apart. So I prefer to share what I know and what I discover. About us Dutch, about the British, Germans, Americans, Indians, Japanese and countless others. I want people to be curious about each other's cultures, proud enough to preserve their own, and generous enough to appreciate somebody else's. When I travel, I want to encounter the place I travelled to. I want Britain to feel British, Germany German, India Indian and the Netherlands Dutch. I don't want our countries slowly flattened into the same interchangeable global culture, where every city has the same shops, the same food, the same attitudes and eventually very little left that belongs uniquely to the people who built it. The cultures surrounding the Netherlands have helped shape the place I call home for centuries. Britain is part of that story. So are Germany, Belgium and many others. Our languages, trade, wars, religions, ideas, food and traditions have crossed the North Sea and our borders for generations. In that sense, I don't merely see you as neighbours. I see you as family. Although getting offended by a joke is behaviour I would have expected from the Germans. 😉 I may occasionally make fun of you. But I would never make light of your civilisation.