Just before the new king appeared on the balcony, I got some wonderful news: my Bolivian friend had passed her UK citizenship test. The fifth time was a charm. We’ve been revising for this since 2018, during which time I have learned, forgotten and learned again what the Picts were up to and when, what a traditional Northern Irish dish is and which view was voted by Britons in 2007 as the nation’s most beautiful. OK, it appears that I’ve forgotten that last one all over again, but it doesn’t matter, because my friend is now legit.
By about two years in, I was finding everything about this test offensive. It required a huge amount of quite diffuse knowledge that would probably never reside in the same person, whether they were born in Britain or not: some of us can name Olympians, some of us can name signature titles in the canon of David Lean and some of us know whether or not the UK government has ever used its power to suspend the Northern Ireland assembly, but the only people who know all these things are quiz teams. That is, apparently, what Great British Values boil down to: could you, or could you not, pull your weight in a pub quiz?
