Forget pyramids and cathedrals? the Unesco heritage people need to broaden their ideas
Last week the British government submitted its list of nominees for world heritage site status to Unesco. Known as the "UK tentative list", it comprises a house (Darwin's old one in Kent), an observatory (Jodrell Bank), a bridge (the Forth), a Gibraltan cave complex, a twin monastery, some crags, various islands (St Helena and the Turks and Caicos), some areas of countryside (a boggy one and a lakey one) and a way of life (the slate industry of north Wales). Among places that narrowly missed out ? presumably they were on the "extremely tentative list", the "barely a list at all" or the "few thoughts scribbled down on a scrap of paper which you must feel free to ignore" ? were the former RAF station at Upper Heyford, the Great Western Railway and Blackpool.
This is an eclectic mix of? well, what? Buildings? I suppose a bridge is a building but the Lake District isn't. Areas? You wouldn't really call an old house or an observatory an area, would you? Places? Is the Great Western Railway a place? If so, it's a very long and thin place. The north Welsh slate industry certainly isn't, although it happens in a place. It's such an eclectic list, it's difficult to find a noun that applies to everything on it other than "things". It's an eclectic list of British things. And some not-so-British things that Britain owns, such as West Indian islands and Iberian caves. But, for the purposes of Unesco, they're all sites. And often sights. Magnets for sightseers and site-seers alike.
In putting forward this mixed bag of concepts, British government experts are responding to Unesco's concern that the list of 911 world heritage sites has, as the Guardian put it, "become dominated by castles and cathedrals in western Europe". So they're mixing it up a bit. Admittedly, they're having another punt on Darwin's house, which has been submitted and rejected before ? maybe Unesco doubts how much the building in which an important book was written retains the reflected glory of the important book, like that pub where DNA was discovered (by which I mean the site of Crick and Watson's "Eureka!" moment, not some old boozer where traces of blood led to an arrest). But they're also spicing things up with some slate manufacturing and the island where history's most famous Corsican carked it.
But they could go so much further. There are so many other unique and valuable expressions of our culture that should be much higher priority for "world heritage thing" status than all that tedious bricks and mortar, than the predictable array of pyramids and opera houses. If I may be so tentative, here's my list:
The pound
The beleaguered and ancient British currency has too long been the plaything of politicians and speculators. Let's take politics and economics out of the equation and put its fate in the hands of heritage. Basically, people like it ? they liked the shillings, pennies and farthings too, but they were abolished in the interests of reducing the nation's arithmetical agility. So let's protect it, like we protect the Tower of London, without regard to practicalities. Nobody complains about that old fortress being outdated, expensive and much less militarily useful than an aircraft carrier. The Tower is an appealing anachronism in the modern city, so why not make the pound coin the same thing for the modern pocket, nestling next to the smart phone like a Beefeater walking past Deutsche Bank?
The Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse chain
These restaurants are unique to British culture and yet they're under threat. Not for them the business model of repeat custom, these steakhouses' fortunes rely on the much tougher technique of trying to dupe everyone once. It's harder and harder for them to do, as the British tradition of culinary incompetence is eroded by pressures from abroad. When even Little Chef is recruiting Heston Blumenthal, these restaurants, now rarer than the Siberian tiger, are all that we have left of a proud heritage of serving shoe leather with B�arnaise sauce to neon-addled out-of-towners.
The Carling Black Label advertising campaign of the 1980s
Perhaps the greatest cultural achievement of the Thatcher era, the humour of this campaign, particularly the fondly remembered "very long advert where you kept thinking it was the next one and then it wasn't", not to mention "the one with the squirrel and the Mission: Impossible music", elevated these films above mere commerce. Most striking is the fact that they were enjoyed by millions of people who had no intention of drinking Carling Black Label, a beverage with few merits, none of which the commercials deigned to mention. Surely preservation of these works of art is worthy of some of the funding currently being monopolised by so-called "Inca treasures" which, in fact, have hardly appeared on television at all.
The Hamlet cigars advertising campaign of the 1980s
I mean, that music! The comb-over! Think about that and tell me you give a damn about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or whatever.
The Hofmeister advertising campaign of the 1980s
This was brilliant as well. That bear must have been an alcoholic! Adverts used to be great.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's house
It is one of the most shaming truths about our barbarous age that, while much of the great art, architecture and literature of the past may have survived, so few of the normal houses in which those works were devised have been saved for posterity. This is the house where genius lived ? where Brunel worked, designed, fretted. And it's threatened with demolition to make way for a high speed rail link. Only Unesco can save it now.
The smell of cabbage at Butlin's Skegness
As fragile as the Sphinx's face, as transient as the northern lights, as disconcertingly faecal as Seahenge, this irreplaceable part of our gaseous heritage is literally in danger of being blown out to sea. As Butlin's struggles to modernise, introducing climbing walls and a Costa coffee, the great bubbling pots of institutionalised holiday food have long since fallen silent. While we fetishise ancient stonework, molecules of equivalent cultural significance are discriminated against simply for being airborne.
Trident
Britain has always striven, always aspired. We're a warrior people ? we have scourged and conquered vast areas of the planet and so surely it is only fitting that, in commemoration of that martial heritage, we should retain the power to wipe humanity off the face of it? The submarines are a nod to our seafaring past, while the state-of-the-art ballistic missiles are a contemporary touch of which Nelson would surely have approved.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/27/unesco-world-heritage-status-david-mitchell
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