The National Treasures Who Shape UK Culture

Let’s start with the nailed-on candidates, many of them dames or knights of the realm already. The late, great Maggie Smith earned her status on the stage and with the Oscar winning likes of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie across decades before cementing her place with late career performances in the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey. Work like Gosford Park, Lady in the Van, Quartet and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel might be a career highlight for anyone else, but for her those were just a bonus. 

Her good friend Judi Dench had a similar stage-to-screen (and regularly back) trajectory, establishing herself as M in the James Bond films with Die Another Day and surviving a change of Bonds in Casino Royale. She won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love but was nominated a further seven times, most recently for Belfast and Philomena, while she’s also hilariously good in supporting turns in the likes of Pride & Prejudice. 

Dench shares a royal role with a third Dame, Helen Mirren, who also played Elizabeth I to award winning effect but won her Oscar as Elizabeth II in The Queen. She narrates Barbie with wit and lightness but could play dead serious (Golda) or socially aware (The Duke). Most recently she starred in Goodbye June for another national treasure turned first-time director, Kate Winslet. Winslet is herself an Oscar nominee seven times over for films including Iris (alongside Dench) and Steve Jobs, with a win for The Reader. But she’s also made her mark on TV in the likes of I Am…Ruth and shown a gentler side in A Little Chaos or Ammonite. 

Winslet’s breakthrough role, however, was Sense & Sensibility, alongside co-star, screenwriter and dyed in the wool national treasure, Dame Emma Thompson. From Howard’s End if not before, it was clear that Thompson had a gift for both comedy and drama, and she’s proven that over and over in Nanny McPhee, The Children Act, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Cruella and Good Luck to You Leo Grande.  

Now this may be giving you the impression that, Attenborough aside, the UK’s national treasures are all women – but that isn’t the case at all. Sir Ian McKellen, after all, is still acting up a storm in cinemas this month in Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers and shows little sign of slowing down. The once and future Gandalf has played evil toads (Flushed Away), sharp-tongued monsters (The Critic), and icons like Sherlock Holmes (Mr. Holmes).  

McKellen appeared in All Is True, a drama about William Shakespeare, with Dench and another national treasure, both as actor and director: Kenneth Branagh. The theatrical wunderkind has become one of the country’s most successful directors on films like Belfast, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice (in the latter two, he also stars as Hercule Poirot), but he still treads the boards for other directors in big hits like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (and Tenet, etc) or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

His near-contemporary is Colin Firth: he’s been on the list for national treasure status ever since he became many people’s definitive Mr Darcy 30 years ago in the BBC Pride and Prejudice, but since then he’s conquered comedy (Bridget Jones’ Diary and its sequels, Mamma Mia, Love Actually) and drama (The King’s Speech, Supernova) and more TV (Young Sherlock). Or Hugh Grant, who went from foppish romantic hero (Four Weddings and a Funeral) to one of the funniest and most unpredictable actors alive (Paddington 2, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists). And while we’re on the subject of heart throbs, look no further than Sir Idris Elba. He was a rumoured James Bond for decades, but even if he never lands that role, he’s more than proven himself with the likes of Luther and its film spin-off, his more recent TV hit Hijack, and films like Yardie. 

The question is who else belongs among this exalted number. Bill Nighy (About Time, Living) surely has a case, as does Brian Cox (The Escapist) and McKellen’s BFF Patrick Stewart (The Kid Who Would Be King). Sir Lenny Henry (Zog), most recently seen in Jay Kelly and The Magic Faraway Tree, already seems like he’s earned treasure status: not only did he found the hugely successful charitable efforts of Comic Relief, but he has proved himself as a dramatic actor to boot in the likes of Broadchurch and Missing You. Sanjeev Bhaskar too started in comedy like The Kumars at No 42 and Goodness Gracious Me but moved into drama with TV’s Unforgotten and thus has surely also shown the range and staying power of a true treasure. 

Thandiwe Newton (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget) should be in with a shout, as should Imelda Staunton (Pride, Vera Drake) and Celia Imrie (Mamma Mia, Malevolent) or Tilda Swinton (The Eternal Daughter, The Souvenir). And Riz Ahmed, an Academy Award winner for his short film The Long Goodbye, is also an Oscar nominated actor for Sound of Metal, and a two-time BAFTA nominee, for that film and Mogul Mowgli. With further hits like his current comedy favourite Bait, in which he plays an actor rumoured to be in line for the role of Bond, the thriller Relay and a modern-day Hamlet, he’s only cementing his status. 

Also among the younger generation, Keira Knightley (Atonement, Bend It Like Beckham) and Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, The Young Victoria) seem locked in, but they’ll have company from Dev Patel (Lion, Skins, Slumdog Millionaire) and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country, Mothering Sunday) if current trends are any guide. It’s a true cavalcade of talent, with generations of great stars, filmmakers and broadcasters sharing the screen (or stage) with one another and learning as they go, creating a virtuous cycle of incredible work. Lock them all up in the Tower of London; these are the UK’s real crown jewels.