Overall, Boyle's opening ceremony was equal parts Hovis advert, Labour PPB, & my last book trailer.

Had I been in charge … Chaucer, Langland, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare (yes, of course John of Gaunt’s soliloquy and the Band of Brothers speech), Jonson, Milton, Kipling, Betjeman, and Larkin; Dowland, Tallis, Byrd, Parry, Stanford, Darke, Walton, Sumsion, RVW, Elgar; and to make Johnny Foreigner feel specially welcome – after HM led us all in a moment of remembrance for Munich, and sod the bloody IOC – the Ashes; Spurs and the Cups; and … the Armada, Malplaquet, Fontenoy, Minden, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, Badajoz, Waterloo, the suppression of the slave trade, Balaclava, Jutland, the breaking of the Hindenburg Line, Dunsterforce, Dunkirk, Tobruk, Alamein, Burma, Anzio, Rome, Normandy, Imjin, Malaya, and the Cold War, the Falklands, Op Granby, Op Telic and the current war (20th Century narration scripted largely by Winston).

Tags: boring self-indulgence, critical analysis, culture, history