Speaker 2 (00:21)
Welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast, where we explore British travel history and culture. And I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. Today's episode is a little different and rather special. We're recording this one on location in Chicago at the Chicago History Museum on the occasion of His Majesty the King's official birthday. I'm here because my wife and I have been invited to the King's Birthday Garden Party, hosted by the British Consulate General here in Chicago. And before the champagne starts flowing, I've been given the rare privilege of sitting down with the man throwing the party.

Richard Hyde is his Majesty's Consul General in Chicago, the senior British diplomatic representative across 14 states in the American Midwest. He's a career diplomat who has served in India, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Texas, and before taking up his post here in Chicago. he's kindly given us time before the reception to talk about his work, the special relationship between Britain and America, and what it actually means to celebrate the King's birthday on this side of the Atlantic.

And I should mention, we're recording this at the Chicago History Museum, so we thank them for hosting us and putting together a room for us to record in, which is rather appropriate given the deep and rather touching historical connection between this city and Britain, which we'll share more on in a moment. Richard, a very happy King's birthday and welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:36)
Well

thanks, great to have you here and it's great to celebrate with you.

Speaker 2 (01:39)
Yeah, we are we are delighted

to be here. So, before we get into the occasion, I'd love to know a little more about your journey. Your career as a diplomat with the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. You've served in India, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Texas, and now Chicago. How does someone end up with a career like that? And what drew you to the diplomatic service?

Speaker 1 (01:58)
Well,

I grew up in Liverpool in the north of England and my father was an immigrant from India and talked to me about his travels as a child. So I always wanted to see the world, always wanted to travel. And to be honest, I thought about the Navy, I thought about the Air Force. I'm not brave enough for that stuff. So diplomacy, I've always been interested in politics, international relations, other cultures. So for me, it was a natural thing to do.

I've been all around the world pretty much, most continents. And yeah, I find myself now in one of the great world cities, Chicago, which feels like a journey around the world because of all the communities here, the incredible diversity here, and the way Chicago embraces that, it makes me feel like this is a great place to be.

Speaker 2 (02:47)
It is a great place to be and while we love London. Chicago is always close to our hearts. So you've been Consul General now for a couple of years in Chicago. What has surprised you most about Chicago and the Midwest when you arrived? What did you not expect?

Speaker 1 (03:01)
One of the great surprises for me as a Brit living in the United States is how we don't understand this country at all. We think we do. We kind of sometimes speak the same language. we assume, Brits assume that the United States is really obvious. I lived five years in Texas, moved here almost two years ago. I...

It's almost like I'm in a completely different country at times. Chicago, mean, Houston was a fabulous city as well, but Chicago is one of the world's greatest cities. And my wife and I say we are truly blessed to be able to represent our country here. have, I live in an incredible apartment with the most spectacular views of this city and it is a spectacular city. like to joke whenever I have events, especially if New York is in the room by saying that Chicago is one of America's two great cities, proper downtowns. Everywhere else is

sprawl, but Chicago and New York are the two great ones. But the difference is, in Chicago, the people are nice, the streets are clean, and the food's better. New Yorkers get very upset about the food. They kind of agree with the first two, but the food, they disagree. But the reason I say the food is better is that, you know, New York has great food, London has great food, Chicago has great food. Here it's accessible. Chicago is the most accessible city. You don't have to be super, super rich and super, super influential to be able to enjoy this city.

Everything is out there. can go to Navy Pier, the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, which is phenomenal. It has incredible theatre culture here. It has great music, classical, contemporary. You had the Blues Festival last week, the Jazz Festival coming up. You've got the Air and Water Show. This city in the summer. I can't think of anywhere I would rather spend my summer than in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (04:44)
Yeah, we tend to agree the Chicago summer can't be beat and a lot of people don't know that you can fly to almost any continent from Chicago. So it's a great place to be kinda be at the center of the world and Chicago likes to think it's at the center of the world.

Speaker 1 (04:59)
In many

ways it is, right? Because, you know, obviously the United States, 50 different states, 50 different countries, I have the pleasure of working across 14 very different places, very different states. But one thing they all have in common is Chicago's kind of the gateway to those places. So, you know, I always thought when I was traveling around in Kansas or in Indiana or Ohio, there's always, know, everyone competes. ⁓ You know, there's some amazing cities all across the Midwest. But Chicago with its airport and its history is kind of the

way into the Midwest. yeah, it is a kind of a window on the world for the Midwest.

Speaker 2 (05:34)
Have been surprised at how much British stuff there is in Chicago? Cause you got some great pubs that are not just fake. They're pretty good. Yeah. Good Sunday roast.

Speaker 1 (05:44)
I've spent my spent my career complaining about British and Irish pubs around the world because they they always ⁓ they're always kind of an imagination of what a British pub should be. There's a lot more authenticity here. I mean, one of my favorite restaurants here, which I'm very biased because the British restaurant is Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor is a British style steakhouse, one of the best steakhouses in London. In fact, the one in Liverpool, where my hometown is just won some big award as well. And I'm not advertising for Hawksmoor, but I'm just saying that they're Sunday roast.

is as good a Sunday roast as you'll get anywhere in the UK. know, lot of pubs here serve great beer and they do it the right ambiance. There are Irish pubs here I love, I'm from Liverpool, it's a very Irish city. The Irish pubs here are more authentic than you'll get elsewhere. In fact, my good friend, Devin Bruce who's one of our partners for this evening's event, he has an interest in probably the best Irish pub I've been to outside of Ireland, which is Celtic Crossings, which is a proper pub serving proper

the way it should be served, no TVs or food or any of that stuff, just a bit of music and great beer.

Speaker 2 (06:51)
Well if you ever come out to South Bend for anything, you have to go to Fiddler's Hearth. That's the b best Irish pub round. Best the steak in Guinness Pie is almost as good as anything you'll have in Britain.

Speaker 1 (06:55)
I've heard as good as well.

No, I love

Guinness, I love steak, what can go wrong?

Speaker 2 (07:08)
So this is a question I've kind of I've really been wondering about. W what does a consul general actually do? Because you're not an ambassador. You're so what when people hear diplomat, they think ambassador. So like what is your role in Chicago for Britain and for the British people who are in the Midwest?

Speaker 1 (07:27)
So I mean, fundamentally, an ambassador is the representative of a country in another country. So the ambassador in Washington, our ambassador in Washington, represents the whole of the UK in the whole of the United States. This country is just too big for that. So what we do is we split the country up into very unequal chunks. And we have a Consul General who basically then takes on, is delegated the responsibility of representing the UK across that region.

I'm fortunate and also complain a lot that the region I cover is 25 % of the US. We have seven other consulates general in the US covering the other three quarters. So I get the best deal and the worst deal in equal measure. But what my job fundamentally is to get out, so I live in Chicago, but I travel extensively across the Midwest. And I get out and I try and get to meet communities.

of Americans who we don't know well and don't know as well and try to be in front of them, try to understand them and try to explain to them what the UK means for the United States. So in Washington, we talk about big global issues. In rural Kansas or in Missouri or in South Dakota, we talk about things that matter to those people. It could be talking about agricultural challenges. It could be talking about tariffs. It could be talking about immigration. It could be talking about all of their lived experiences.

Now you have to explain to my government and my ambassador in Washington what's happening in American politics. I have a view that is different to the view in Washington. It's the view of the real people in the real America. And I'd say this is the heartland. This is where real Americans come to play and where they're from. And so me being able to get out and get amongst them. So it's about explaining what the UK does in the world, why we think the way we think about big issues, and why we ⁓ try and understand what they...

expect of us as an ally and a partner. I also try and spread the word on culture and music, on food, and also explain to them what the modern Britain looks like. We have some phenomenal TV programs like Downton Abbey and...

Bridgerton kind of. Downton Abbey, have the Crown, have all these things that tell a story, but it's a fictionalized story of the UK. My job is to promote the modern Britain, the multicultural, diverse, proud country that's comfortable with its history, complicated as our history is.

And I explain how we kind of live together. We have challenging times in the UK as in the US right now with views on migration and all those other things. But I try and explain how as a country we come together and try and celebrate what we have as a country unified around a common set of ideals. And they're the ideals that we share with the United States, democracy, freedom, the right to be who you want to be. And that's what I go out and talk about.

Speaker 2 (10:25)
And that's kind of what Anglotopia has been doing for nineteen years, is celebrating the best of British culture and history and travel. And it's ⁓ a lot of people just don't realize how wonderful the place it is. And we just love to tell people that.

Speaker 1 (10:40)
And fairness, I spend a lot of time explaining to Brits how wonderful America is. Because this is a phenomenal, I mean, I've talked about Chicago. talk about Chicago all day. But, you know, if you go to Madison, it's one of the prettiest capitals I've ever been to in Wisconsin. If you go to Cincinnati and Ohio, phenomenal city. I mean, I was in was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota recently. There were some absolutely spectacularly brilliant places. Kansas City and its barbecue. You know, so I talk to Brits about, know, get out, New York's great, LA's great, San Francisco's great, Florida's great.

but there's a whole big country of diverse opportunity in the United States that you need to go and explore. So I spend all my time reversing your message and saying the Midwest is great too and it's full of culture and full of fabulous people and great beer and great food. So I do the same job as you but in reverse as well. It's probably not my core job. I'm supposed to be selling Britain but I sell the Midwest too.

Speaker 2 (11:30)
Well we appreciate it. And so speaking of the the area, so you represent fourteen states and that's huge. Like you said, that's probably is that the biggest ⁓ we're fifty. Wow. So what what is what because of that incredible diversity, what does that mean for the UK's interests? What what in a typical week, what are you going to see and do out in in this area? So

Speaker 1 (11:41)
Yeah, but 50 % bigger than the next terrorist.

In the first, in the first of...

two years of the job, first 20 months of the job. My focus has been about building commercial and scientific and people-to-people relationships. So it's about embracing the cultural piece, which you very helpfully support us in. ⁓ It's about talking to universities about the great science that's going on here and how the UK and universities and these universities can come together. Because between us, we have four out of 10 greatest universities in the world, and the US has the other six.

So we've got the world covered between us. So we try and bring those universities together. We try and support the companies. There's some great historic investors in the UK from here. know, Kraft Heinz and Heinz Big Bean, the emblematic elements of the British breakfast. There's an American product that all Brits think is British and Americans think is a joke.

Speaker 2 (12:48)
And you can't find

here.

Speaker 1 (12:50)
I

find it because Americans are like, why would you put beans on your breakfast? But the point is that they've been in the UK for over 100 years. we've got great British companies like Rolls Royce in Indiana who make aero engines, who are very big and nuclear now. So it's about helping those companies in the two directions to grow, to build, to do more, to stay abreast of technology. that's been the core focus. My other focus is understanding the politics, what's under the surface. And as you may have spotted, there are some midterms coming up.

in November and there's lots of primaries. My region, we have 105 members of the House of Representatives in my region and we have 28 senators. So I argue and I think it's true that the region I covered at 14 states that I cover, Worldly side, who controls the House, who controls the Senate and probably in 28 who is president of the United States. And so there's a lot of interest in what's happening under the surface and so I spend a lot of time trying to dig deep, not overtly politically, just trying to listen to people, listen to farmers.

listen to kind of people in agricultural areas, in the cities in places like Detroit and Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, get out there and meet lots of different people and hearing their voices and trying to figure out what's driving them, what do they fear?

and what's their kind of... Americans are fundamentally positive people. What gets them up in the morning and what's driving them to do better? And that gives me a sense of where politics is going in this country as well. So I do a little translational piece there as well about politics.

Speaker 2 (14:21)
So interesting. I I it's I I imagine there's a lot of threading the needle so you don't you know, between your own government, between our government and all those representatives and centers, I imagine that's quite a challenge dealing with all those different personalities.

Speaker 1 (14:33)
we get down to

kind of city mayors who are really important people. We get down to state houses. I've had the privilege of addressing the state house in Missouri and the state house in Illinois. I mean, in Illinois, I'm standing on podium that Lincoln stood on and talking to elected representatives about my country. mean, that's a phenomenal opportunity and a great gift to me. And it means I can meet people where they are and talk about their issues that matter to them. And what the big lesson I learn is that the big kind of global issues that we fixate

on, that's not what gets people up in the morning. What gets people in the morning is how do I pay my bills, how do I sell my product, how do I, you know, can I get my corn out of the field and is there a market for it? And it's understanding that allows us to understand better what's driving politics in the United States.

Speaker 2 (15:22)
So let's talk about today. So we're here to celebrate the King's official birthday. And I wanna make sure that our American listeners understand what that actually is because it's one of those very British traditions that sounds eccentric until you understand it. The King's actual birthday is in November. Yes. but the official birthday is in June. Why?

Speaker 1 (15:42)
So.

very simply, we are the only country in the world. there's officially there were two countries in the world that don't have a National Day, the United Kingdom and Denmark. Denmark has a sort of semi official day, the Constitutional Day. So we're kind of the only country in the world without a National Day. And overseas in diplomatic circles, every country celebrates its National Day. It's a big party to celebrate that country. And so we don't have one. we, I wouldn't say we created the one, but we use the official anniversary of the King's coronation as kind

of the day that we celebrate. And the King and previously the Majesty the Queen, hopefully it was in June, which is...

I wouldn't say the best month, but the least worst month in the UK to have an outdoor event. And so that's the tropping of the colour, it's a celebration of the kings at the anniversary of his coronation. And so we use that as our celebratory point overseas. It's not actually a day, it's a period of time in June that we can hold an event in. That's why we do it, so we don't have a national day. You know, guys have 4th of July, we don't have

People often ask me, why is it that Brits don't really care about the flag? mean, we do care about the flag, but you can make clothes out of the flag and if the flag touches the floor, it's not a big deal in the UK. And I always make the point, and I've lived, I say, all around the world, countries that have had to fight for liberty and have to fight for independence, the flag is the symbol of that. So in the United States and pretty much every country I've lived in, in India, in Venezuela, the flag is the symbol of their liberty. Our flag was created really from

existing countries that we had, so Scotland, Wales, well it was England, Scotland, Wales and then later Northern Ireland, so the Union flag is basically a combination of four different crosses that make up those four countries, constituent parts of the UK. So all of those things to say that we need a day to celebrate our country in other countries and so we've kind of used the King's coronation as that occasion.

Speaker 2 (17:42)
So

We're at the Chicago History Museum today, ⁓ which is fitting. Because I didn't know this until we I was researching this interview, that the community partner for this event, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, in honor it's and they're holding it here in honor of a remarkable bit of Anglo-American history. Yeah. The after the great Chicago fire of 1871, Queen Victoria and around 8,000 British donors, including Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Stuart Mill, sent books to

And that donation directly led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. And Victoria's copy of a biography of Prince Albert, personally signed by her, is still in the library special collection. So can you tell us about that connection and why it feels so right to celebrate today?

Speaker 1 (18:31)
It's a story that I heard, actually the governor of Illinois told me the story when I first arrived at an event and I didn't know it and I went out and researched it and my team got really kind of caught up in this. ⁓ We think it's a brilliant example of how a gesture in 1871

still resonates now. know, literacy matters, books matter, libraries matter, availability and access to libraries really matter. And so when we were planning this event, we thought, let's celebrate that. Let's celebrate the fact that we did something very simple to help rebuild

literacy in Chicago after the Great Fire. And so tonight we're going to encourage our guests to donate to the Chicago Library Foundation to kind of continue that process of making learning and literature and enjoyment of books available to all Chicagoans.

The availability of stories and history shouldn't be limited to the rich and famous. It should be available to everybody. So we want to kind of encourage that spirit that Queen Victoria started all those years ago. Let's give books. Let's give people access to books. And so that's what we're going to celebrate tonight.

Speaker 2 (19:49)
I and

I would say Chicago's a very bookish city. We've got absolutely great bookstores and we've got a great literary heritage. Ernest Hemiway is from here. And we also a lot of libraries in the Midwest were funded by Andrew Carnegie, who was born in Britain and made his fortune here in the US. So it's the Anglo-American heritage is is strong and a lot of people just don't even know it's there.

Speaker 1 (20:12)
And as I said before, we kind of speak the same language, so it's really easy.

Speaker 2 (20:15)
Yeah. So this year marks America two fifty, which is America celebrating its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its independence from you. I have t so I have to ask as the representative of the country that the Declaration of Independence was written against, how do you approach this year?

Speaker 1 (20:34)
We're celebrating it. I mean, the reason we're holding a King's Birthday party this year, we don't hold them every year. The reason we're doing it this year, and we're doing it across all of our consulates and of course the embassy, is to celebrate America 250. We're making a point of celebrating America 250. The King visited a few weeks ago as part of that celebration because we, flippantly I'd say, we celebrate the fact that this is the greatest startup in history. We argued a little bit and there was some spilled tea and despite

all of that we can still come together and you 250 years on you know no two countries do more together in the world you know whether it be our military our intelligence services our economies are intertwined and interconnected our service industries which the UK and the US are dominant they they know they are integral you know so this is this is a 250 year story of a challenging start and a fantastic

legacy of history of the 20th century, we came together to do great things. In the 21st century, whether it be science or culture, we're doing great things together as well. So for us, it's a great celebration of what America has achieved. And there's no business. We like to have a little joke, if you know, again, when my speech later, I'll be making a few jokes about that. But the point is that we see this as a celebration of America's incredible story that we are part of.

not necessarily a great part of the start, but certainly in the last 150 of those 250 years, we have been a friend, a partner, an ally, a supporter. ⁓ And many of the people in this country who have led this country from George Washington onwards have their heritage in our country. And we want to celebrate that as well. we're all in on 250.

Speaker 2 (22:20)
Well I love that because a lot of people don't realize that for the two hundred and fifty years before independence w we couldn't have been more English or British. And the founding fathers, they were just British people asking for their rights as as British people.

Speaker 1 (22:33)
And

I have to say, you know, I saw Hamilton recently and I've got to say the best character in Hamilton is the King and everyone agrees, right? It's the best. He has the best songs. We'll be back. No jokes.

Speaker 2 (22:39)
So

fifth col there's joke about a fifth column there. So ⁓ the king addressed a joint session of Congress, which is a very rare honor and occasion. His I believe his mother only did it once or twice. ⁓ so what did that visit to Congress mean and what did that speech mean for you as a as a consulate?

Speaker 1 (23:07)
It was huge. The speech to Congress, I think, and the speech to the state dinner as well, both phenomenally crafted and impeccably delivered by the King. The King has a unique role to play in diplomacy, in political diplomatic relations between prime ministers and presidents.

You know, have moments of, you have highs and you have lows and you have challenges and you have opportunities and some heads of state get on well, some don't. There are moments. Fundamentally, we're all, know, our political leadership are driven by politics and politics ⁓ is a brutal game. The king kind of rises above that. And so he was able to come at a challenging time in our relationship and remind Americans and remind Brits as well.

that there are more fundamentally more important things than the moment that we're in. And that is our shared values. And so he spoke about values. He spoke about our shared values. He spoke about our combined history and how we got to where we are, whether it Magna Carta through to the constitution and the Bill of Rights. know, all of these things are the same thread and we believe the same things. And he just took a moment at Congress just to remind everybody that. And it was a powerful moment.

I've had politicians from both sides of the aisle come to me and say, wow, that was an important moment. And it was, because in ⁓ the modern world, we get so caught up in...

in Twitter or X and TikTok and Instagram and instant gratification online and everything is short term and everything is immediate. And somebody who stands up there who's representing a very long historical legacy to just say, take a pause, think about the big things. The big things are, what do we have in common and what values do we share? I think that was the message that he landed absolutely beautifully. No criticism of anybody, just reminding us of who we are. And I think that's a really human thing to do.

Speaker 2 (25:05)
And he spoke to two audiences with a with the same message, and both sides heard what they wanted to hear. So it's a masterclass in threading the needle.

Speaker 1 (25:12)
Yeah, because fundamentally, and I say this about British politics, I say this about American politics. I'm apolitical, we're not political appointees, I'm an independent civil servant, so I don't have views on politics at home or views on politics here. I just  analyze them. It wasn't that people heard what they wanted to hear. Fundamentally, 80 % is agreed. Americans, whether it be on the left or the right, fundamentally agree 80 % of the time.

There's a nuance on that, and there's a bit on the edge that they disagree violently on. But most of it is the fundamental things that we all agree on. 80 % of the time, both sides can say, yeah, actually, that works for me. And that's what we just focused on that stuff. We focused on the big things that we agree on. And we worry about the things we disagree on at other times and other places.

Speaker 2 (26:02)
So well we've got to get the king to Chicago. We gotta get him to try some deep dish.

Speaker 1 (26:05)
I

kind of hoped we would get him here. It was challenging. Every city in America wanted the King to visit. I was pushing hard for Chicago, but Washington is the place that you have to visit and it's important. It was really important that he went there and did that. But a lot of Chicagoans, mean a whole bunch of Chicagoans were at the Garden Party at the Embassy and met the King and lot of our business and political leadership here were able to go and do that. That was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (26:36)
So Chicago itself has a long history with Britain. So beyond the library story, what there are architectural connections, there are commercial ties. So what does the Anglo Chicago relationship look like to you from where you sit?

Speaker 1 (26:50)
It's really interesting because so much of what is Chicago comes from its heritage. Now, unusually in America, for American big cities, it's not really a British heritage per se. There were Germans and were Norwegians and there were Italians and there were Poles and there Ukrainians. Everybody is here, and Irish, of course, as well. there's lots of different...

communities that made up this kind of melting pot that is Chicago. But if you look at people like Frank Lloyd Wright, know, the man from Wisconsin who created the skyscrapers and the skyline, his family are Welsh. And so, you know, the clue's in the name, but his family are Welsh. Even Abraham Lincoln. When I was speaking at the house in Springfield, I was doing a deep dive into, I've got to find a Lincoln connection somewhere. I didn't realize, but Lincoln's great, I think his great-great-grandfather was from a little village in North Wales, which is 40 miles from my hometown in Liverpool.

So even Lincoln's roots are into North Wales as well, so a very strong Welsh connection. But even today, if you look at the bean, it's a Brit So there's little bits of Britain everywhere in this city and there's little bits of Chicago in the UK as well. But the thing about living in the US as a Brit is that, we talk about this a lot in the office, that if you're pretty much any other country in the world.

If you have a national day or a cultural day, there is genuine interest in it because it's unusual. If we have a British cultural day, most Americans are like, yeah, I kind of know that already. I don't need to go to that because I know about it. We do a British music cultural day in the United States. You put the Beatles and Oasis and the Stones. Everyone's like, well, that's not interesting. We hear that all the time. So our culture is so kind of deep, deeply interconnected that it's very difficult for us to separate it out.

I'm at an whole argument in the office today about, we were talking about Mumford and Sons who were playing this evening in Wrigley and a lot of people don't realize it's British band. And the killers who played at the Champions League final a few weeks ago, I assume they were British. So there is this kind of complete cross-culture that we don't know where our own culture starts and other people's cultures end when it comes to the United States. So it's more difficult in many respects to be seen as different in Chicago, but I don't mind that. There's no place I've ever lived

that I felt more at home. it's an easy one to.

Speaker 2 (29:14)
Yeah, and it's the the transatlantic ⁓ train is two ways. l big parts of the London Underground were built by a Chicagoan, Charles Yerkes, ⁓ Gordon Selfridge founded Selfridges.

Speaker 1 (29:26)
right? was a TV series I never watched, but my wife used to watch it about that, about that founding of Selfridges.

Speaker 2 (29:31)
Yeah, so it's Chicago has deep roots in Britain too. So now, ⁓ so you've spent many years representing Britain abroad. Does that change how you see Britain yourself? Do you find yourself appreciating things about home differently from a distance? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:46)
mean, absence makes the heart go fonder, right? That's true. It's always funny when you meet diaspora groups overseas, of the Scots, the Irish, a very prominent Welsh as well, they long for their homeland and a lot of the songs are about their homeland. It's absolutely true when you live away, you miss simple things, you miss important things, you miss family, you miss culture. I I miss sport, I can watch it, but I miss being at sporting events. ⁓ But the most important thing is that when you're away from home, you realise...

how great your country is and I just there's things about the UK that I took for granted when I lived there and now representing my country overseas I actually realized that we're really good at many many things whether it be science or culture or music or sport or sometimes politics

But know, literature, you know, there's so much that we have brought to the world and you don't really understand that until you're not in it. Obviously representing your country, you dive into it much more. So the longer I stay away and the more I've represented my country overseas, prouder I am of that country. Warts and all, I'm proud of the history, even though the history of the transatlantic slave trade, which was fundamentally started in my hometown of Liverpool, which is why the International Slavery Museum is in.

Liverpool, we have embraced our history and the fact that our city was built on the back of slaves. We've embraced that. That's part of our culture. That's part of who we are. We're not pulling down statues. We're just making sure we know who those statues are of. And they were men, usually men, of their time. And we understand that the things they did then would not be tolerated now. What we don't kind of, know, so it's about embracing all of that and being overseas and being able to promote my country. It's important that we remind people that, you you didn't just land

here from another planet. Your country has evolved and you can celebrate all that went before. know, Winston Churchill, I gave a speech about him recently in Fulton, Missouri to celebrate a big anniversary of his speech there, his famous Iron Curtain speech. You know, and there were people that want to kind of talk about Winston Churchill in a negative light now. No, he was a man of his times and he was a genius war prime minister and we have to celebrate that. And I, know, it's intolerable, even as somebody of an Indian origin who's

grandfather was in Bengal during the famine you know doesn't matter the man was the man at the moment so it's the more I'm away from my country the more I understand what we've brought to the world what I say to I speak to a lot of young people in America a lot of school students and high school students and college students and the thing I always say to them is if you ever get a chance travel spend time abroad because when you spend time overseas a semester abroad or travel for Peace Corps or whatever it is

Take time away from your life here and you'll understand A, that the country that you love isn't perfect.

⁓ People see it differently when you're abroad. But the longer you think, and the more you think about that, the more you will appreciate what your country does. And I think that's a really important message I always give to Americans. Get on a plane, go and spend some time overseas. I don't mean a two week vacation in the Amalfi Coast and London. I mean go and spend a semester abroad. Go and spend a few months living in somebody else's culture. And have a different perspective of what America gives to the world. And it gives a huge amount. But it'll change your perspective a little

Thank

Speaker 2 (33:08)
Yeah,

and I try to spend as much time in Britain as I possibly can. And when I come home I'm still happy to be home in Chicago. 'Cause it's home. You know. And do you find there's a particular place or tradition or piece of culture that you find yourself championing around the Midwest here?

Speaker 1 (33:14)
absolutely.

I mean I'm an unapologetic Liverpudlian right? So I love the fact that everywhere I've been in the world, including in a Chinese restaurant in Somalia in 1998, I hear Beatles music. I can't go anywhere without hearing Beatles music. And that is, you know, there's four young kids, working class kids from my hometown.

I spend all my time as Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and just going round with the director and just say, British, British, British, British. I just love kind of talking about that kind of.

what we have done for music in the 20th and 21st century. ⁓ And obviously all of that evolved and the Beatles, Paul McCartney talks about this a lot, the Beatles evolved from African-American rock and roll in the 50s and 60s. That's where they got their inspiration. And then they took it to a different level, but it's that musical culture. And the other thing that I've really, it's very much a Chicago has got...

taught me this is I've never really been a great theatre-goer I've never really been a great lover of Shakespeare I mean I was at school we were taught Shakespeare by reading the book which is the way Shakespeare is supposed to be learned

Ed Hall, who's the director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre here, has kind of infected me now. I've been to so many first nights of all of their performances here and I've become kind of addicted to theatre and I've been, know, off Broadway on Chicago, they do an amazing job of bringing shows here. So I've really gotten into theatre and appreciate British, what Britain does for theatre as well and for musical theatre and for comedy.

and for drama. yeah, all of the music and cultural stuff, it's not really what I do in a job, but it's a great tool for delivering messages and getting you in the room.

Speaker 2 (35:25)
And Chicago has a great theater scene and we get a lot of the great British plays and musicals at at least at some point in their run.

Speaker 1 (35:33)
My wife went to see Kinky Boots yesterday and she said it was phenomenal. I couldn't go unfortunately but she took some friends and it was amazing. Another British play here. I think I saw the Harry Potter Cursed Child when it opened here. Unbelievable. Yeah and yeah there's one notebook. It's not British but notebooks coming in this summer as well. My daughter's very excited about that. But yeah we,

Speaker 2 (35:45)
Yeah. Six is coming back too.

Speaker 1 (35:54)
We speak the same language, but we have a different take on comedy, a different take on drama. We use language slightly differently. And it's great that I can appreciate American ⁓ theater and music and culture. And Americans can appreciate British as well. It's fun to play with.

Speaker 2 (36:10)
So now I'm going to ask you the hardest, most controversial question of this interview. What's your favorite tea?

Speaker 1 (36:15)
My favorite tea...

this is where it gets embarrassing, I don't drink tea. no. I know, I make a lot of jokes about tea in my speech tonight but for different reasons. no, I'm not a great tea drinker. If I was going to drink tea I would drink probably what we call in the UK, builder's tea, is kind PG Tips or one of those kind of Yorkshire teas which you, know, the old joke is you stew the tea bag for so long that the spoon stands up on its own you know, it's got to be strong tea but I'm very much a bit of a coffee snob unfortunately.

espresso lover which which you know it's just great because I can get good coffee here as well.

Speaker 2 (36:52)
Yeah, I'm a Yorkshire team myself. Every morning.

Speaker 1 (36:56)
Yeah, I mean, if I was going

to go to you, it Yorkshire tea. The problem is that I've been trying to be healthy and if I drink tea, I always want to have a biscuit. ⁓ I can't drink tea without a biscuit. It doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (37:06)
Yeah, I'm on a I'm on a a health plan diet myself in preparation for walking Hadrian's wall. And I can have it's a great walk. Yeah, I cannot wait. sixty days is I'm I'm I'm going. And but ⁓ I can't have sugar in my tea and I can't have biscuits with my tea. But I can have artificial sweetener in my tea. So it works. It works. It works. I'm it needs musts. So finally for my last question, in the two years you've been here, what is now your favorite thing about Chicago? What what has

What has it given you that you didn't expect?

Speaker 1 (37:37)
This is going to probably sound a little kind of patronizing, but it's people. I mean, I've lived, this is the 10th different overseas assignment that we've done. I haven't lived anywhere, there's a lot of places where you meet people and they are, they're friendly. And they'll say, yeah, great, come for dinner.

and then you never ever have heard from again. And Brits did that as well. In Chicago, they then text you and they phone you and you go for dinner and then they make you feel the most welcome people in the world. This is, of all the places I've lived, this is the easiest place I've found to actually build a network of people. Now in our job, my wife and I joke about this, our kids are older. When our kids were young, it was really easy to make friends when you move every three or four years. When you don't have kids at school anymore,

difficult. You've got your professional colleagues and then you kind of, that's it. Chicago is the easiest place in the world to build a network of friends and I have lots of different friends and not all professional contacts. mean there's lots of different people. You can stand in a bar and someone starts talking to you about the cubs or the socks or the balls and fundamentally how terrible everyone is at the moment. That's the top of conversation and I've been there, done that with my own teams. But the point is that the people here are, and it's not just a Chicago thing, it's kind of a Midwest thing, people are authentically friendly.

And the authentic piece is the key word is that people genuinely want to know a little bit about you and they want to share a little bit about them and if you strike up a conversation you get on they actually want to kind of go on a hang out with you again and they follow up and yeah it is a great place and you can argue with Chicagoans as well and they don't take it to heart. So yeah people are amazing. I could have said food and culture and music and theatre and the skyline and the river walk and the

the architecture tour which I've way too many times now because everybody wants to do it when they visit but you can never do it too many times because it is something new every time you do it but the people are great.

Speaker 2 (39:39)
I feel I should ask a World Cup question. Is England gonna bring it home?

Speaker 1 (39:42)
So I have to confess that I'm not an England fan. Yeah, I mentioned before, my dad was from India, my mom's family are kind of Welsh, Irish. And I've grown up in Liverpool, Liverpool's a slightly strange place. We don't really consider ourselves English English. We're British, not English. So I'm not, I mean, I will help cheer on England, but that's not my team. Wales have qualified, that would have been a different conversation. But I don't know.

I was joking with my daughters about England fans and I was joking with them today. They didn't appreciate it about, know, England look really good right now. They look really, really strong yesterday. I think it's the most balanced England side for a long time. And frankly, there's no really big standout teams. Argentina, France, Germany, always there. Spain are always there. England, they're in that top five of the European teams. But yeah, they could, but I think the conditions.

Playing in hot, stadiums is going to be challenging for all the European teams. So I'm not looking beyond Argentina right now.

Speaker 2 (40:46)
Well, Richard, it has been a v genuine pleasure. Thank you for holding this party and taking the time before to speak with us, and for representing His Majesty with such evident enthusiasm. So happy King's birthday. For listeners wanting to follow the British Consulate General Chicago, you can find them on X. ⁓ and I will link to the show notes where you can follow them. And if you're in Chicago today and you missed the party, but there's always next year. ⁓ if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, please subscribe, like, or comment. And if you enjoy the Anglotopia podcast,

Please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club, where you can get early access to new episodes and connect with other Britain enthusiasts. So join us next time as we continue exploring the people, places, and stories that make Britain's cultural heritage so endlessly fascinating to discover. And also, thank you again to the Chicago Historical Society for hosting us for this interview. We really appreciate it.