Family Affair: Alec Guinness Times Eight in Kind Hearts and Coronets

Lists of very British things can be relied upon to have evergreen entries – tea, fish and chips, pubs, queues, small talk about weather – based on venerable stereotypes that nobody wants to debunk or discard. Less cited but still quintessentially British is the class system, which still persists in all its layers and fine gradations nearly thirty years after Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott (and not, as often claimed, John Major) proclaimed that "We are all middle class now." If I were to make a personal list of British things I would include comedies produced by Ealing Studios...