Jonathan W Thomas - Adventures in Anglotopia: The Makings of an Anglophile

I was standing in front of Buckingham Palace the day before the Royal Wedding (the one for Prince William). It was a surreal moment. I was in my best suit, standing in front of a BBC camera, I was about to be interviewed by a BBC presenter I had seen on TV countless times. I was suitably nervous. This interview was the whole reason I came to cover the Royal Wedding. Running Anglotopia at this stage, I rarely left the basement; thats the joy of running a home-based business. Now, I was in front of the world. It was an opportunity I didnt want to squander.

There was a pre-interview before the actual interview started. Then, the question was asked.

Why are you such an Anglophile? he asked, or a variation of that. It was a long time ago.

Why, indeed?

Its a question Ive thought a lot about. I almost choked when it was my moment to answer; Im sure I rattled something off quickly that didnt really answer the question. Its a question Ive been seeking the answer to ever since I started Anglotopia in a closet in Chicago in 2007. Why do I love Britain so much? Why am I obsessed with a country that is not my owna place I dont live, a place in which I dont have any immediate physical or familial connection? If I got the phone call tomorrow that I could move to Britain, why would I do it at the drop of a hat?

In almost every interview Ive had over the years, Ive been asked this question. When we meet Brits in person, they wonder the same thing. Its such a curious thing to them that someone could love their country so much. I get at least one email or online comment every week from someone wondering the same thing. Its a good question, but Ive never really had a good answer for it.

When I was pondering what type of book I wanted to write, I settled pretty quickly on answering this one question. Coming up with an answer would not be easy. I would have to peer back deeply into my own past, before and after I started Anglotopia. I would have to find nuggets along a trail that weaved through my entire life and encompassed almost all the trips Ive taken to Britain over the last twenty years. At last, I finally have an answer.

The journey starts in a classroom in Indiana in the late 90s. When I walked into my seventh grade geography class and saw the TV, I was thrilled. It was a cold winter day, just a few days before we were supposed to go on Christmas Break. Our minds were already on Christmas, and we had no desire to learn about the geographical issues facing the Indonesian islands. A TV in the room meant one thing: we would be watching a movie that day what a relief. We could just sit back and watch the movie.

But Mr. Milakovic did things a bit different. Rather than turn the movie on and return to his desk to do whatever it is he would rather be doing, presumably not teaching a bunch of ungrateful white kids about geography and instead planning a canoe trip through the Isle Royale in Lake Superior, he made us earn our movie. We had to fill out a worksheet with questions so specific, it would ensure we had to pay attention to every line in the movie. Im grateful for this teaching strategy because it forced me to pay attention to the film. And it turned out that the film we watched that day, The Empire of the Sun, would become one of my favorite movies and, consequently, provide the nugget of Anglophilia that I have today.

I knew nothing about the film. It had an alluring title. Mr. Milakovic introduced it to us quickly, telling us that it was a film about a little boy, about our age, surviving a time of war. I had heard of World War II by that point. How could I not even in the woefully inadequate US education system? But I had no idea The Empire of the Sun would personalize it, and put it in a context that would lead to a lifelong fascination with World War II and all things British.

I listened to every line in that film with great interest. Class was only forty-five minutes long, so it took us most of the week to get through it all, and I was excited every day to go to school and finish it. During Christmas break, I begged my mum to rent the movie from the video store (this was the late 90s, they still existed) and I watched it again with her.

The Empire of the Sun is a Steven Spielberg directed film (I consider The Empire of the Sun, Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan to be the perfect unofficial trilogy about World War II) about a little British boy called Jamie (Christian Bale), living in China with his imperialist family, getting caught up in the Japanese invasion of China, and subsequently the greater events of World War II. He gets separated from his parents and lives on his own for a while, before befriending a couple of Americans (John Malkovich and Joe Pantoliano) and ending up in a Japanese Concentration Camp. Hes ignorant of the world and, in fact, has a lot of respect for the Japanese and their amazing airplanes. The adults around him struggle to cope with the depredations of war, while he comes of age in a time of suffering with a childlike wonderment at everything happening around him.

It must have been a bizarre world to live in. This boy lives in China, but he might as well have been living in Surrey. Their house was English. Their furnishings were English (with a dash of the Far East). Their food was English. Their car was English. His education was English. Their attitudes were English post-Victorian Imperialist, to be exact. In the first act of the movie, he only sees glimpses of the country he really lives in and notices things arent quite right. War is looming.

Jamie has spent his whole life in China, but hes British. Yet, Britain is a foreign place to him.

Im English, but Ive never been there, he says.

That line spoke to me, and it still speaks to me. For a large part of my childhood and teenage years, I loved England, but I wasnt English, and Id never been there. Why?

I found, as I was writing this book, that I kept looking for a single event that led to me becoming an Anglophile. But there wasnt a single one. It was the culmination of many events. British culture was everywhere in my childhood, often in the background. It was Roald Dahl books that I loved. It was British TV shows on PBS late at night. It was the classical music I liked. It was the history I devoured. It was popular culture with the Beatles and other British bands who were popular in America. It was Patrick Stewart and Marina Sirtis in