Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the London games was meant to be a celebration of Britain’s diverse history and its open-minded values. Ten years later, it seems more like a requiem.
Dreams figured prominently in the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. The first speaker of the night was Kenneth Branagh, channelling both Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Shakespeare’s Caliban: “The clouds methought would open, and show riches. Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked, I cried to dream again!” An entire section was devoted to children’s bedtime nightmares. Rowan Atkinson lapsed into a dream during his cameo in Chariots of Fire. And hallucinatory spectacles such as the Queen jumping out of a helicopter with James Bond made 900 million viewers around the world wonder if they were the ones dreaming.
Ten years on, the whole ceremony feels more dreamlike than ever. This was Britain as a rich, diverse, multicultural, imaginative, inventive nation comfortable with its identity and capable of reconciling its contradictions. We were traditional yet modern. We were powerful yet caring. We were orderly yet anarchic. We had a vast back catalogue of world-changing culture from which to draw. We knew how to put on a good show. And we had a sense of humour…
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