Great and good
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However fashionable it might be to disdain the fashion for lists, we love them. People love them. (The surviving fragments of the ancient script Linear B turned out to be lists, mostly of groceries, if memory serves.)
The latest list, compiled by the BBC, is 100 Great Britons. The Carpers will doubtless be joined by the Purists in condemning meaningless comparison. We will merely muse over the choices of our 33,000 fellow citizens, presented alphabetically: Alfred the Great, Andrews, Julie, (King) Arthur... Boudicca, Bowie, David... Mercury, Freddie, Montgomery (Field Marshall), Moore, Bobby, More, Thomas... Richard III, Richard, Sir Cliff... Wilberforce, William, Williams, Robbie. What a country!
Quibbles? No representatives from several of our fields of pre-eminence: no growers of vegetables, large, funny-shaped, for example, or Fish, Michael; and no one from Big Brother.
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