Q:What's so "Great" about Britain . A: It's an Island.

 I  wonder if David Anderson the head of National Museum Wales was somewhat motivated by  the report  report on Wales’ national museums  Dr Simon Thurley, which has been criticised after it called on them to abandon a “narrowly Welsh” perspective on history.


The BBC seem to have missed the possible connection with the  reports that claimed .

The head of National Museum Wales has been accused of a "rant against Britishness" over comments he made in a speech at a tourism event.

David Anderson said Britain was not "Great" - and claimed the Brexit vote was "madness".
The Welsh Conservatives say he is a public servant and should remain neutral.
Mr Anderson said in response it was the role of museums to pose challenging questions and encourage debate.
While he has spoken out about controversial issues in the past, this time he went much further.

In a speech about promoting tourism after Brexit, the director general said he never wanted to stand beneath another banner that says 'Britain is Great'.
He called the words a lie - and a notion that contributed to the "collective delusional madness" of Brexit.
Mr Anderson said the whole industry should "cease to peddle falsehoods of British 'greatness'.

"I do not wish, ever again, to stand underneath the 'Britain is Great' banner,"
"The words are a lie.
"They contributed to the collective delusional madness that is Brexit.
"Our tourism industry... must cease to peddle falsehoods of British 'Greatness'."

Conservative culture spokeswoman Suzy Davies AM said Mr Anderson had a right to an opinion but should be more sensitive about where he expresses it.

"Rather than bring something positive to the table and how to bring Wales more into that sense of greatness, he took the opportunity to paint Britain as this black, dystopian place that nobody would want to visit."

Mr Anderson would not be interviewed but said in a statement it was the role of museums to pose challenging questions and stimulate debate.

He said,

"It was in this context that I put forward the argument at the conference that we urgently need a new and more contemporary definition of Britishness in which Wales' voice is much more strongly heard, and that reflects the diversity of cultures and identities of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom,"

Andrew Green, former librarian at the National Library of Wales said it was important that heads of national institutions were not party political but also that they were not "robots".

"As far as I can see, David Anderson was contributing to a debate about the extent to which Britishness and the role of Visit Britain in advertising for tourists to come to Wales, how those things work.
"I don't think that's party political but contributing to a debate which is entirely fair".

Mr Anderson does seem to me a response to   Dr Thurley  who said.

“My main criticism was a lack of ambition in the story that was being told,”

“These sites were presented as if they were telling part of the social history of a small country. “Whereas they could be telling the story of how Wales, a small country, together with its larger neighbours England and Scotland, transformed the world in the 19th century.” The change would make the museums more interesting for tourists “from outside Wales”, “Wales played a crucial role in the British century and its raw materials and know-how made a major contribution to the industrial revolution and the empire,” he said. “Of course the human story in Wales is interesting and compelling, but so is the big picture of how Wales, as part of Britain, changed the face of the globe.”

I am with Mr Anderson on this  indeed in the wider context where  the "Great " in Britain is often taken as a synonym  for almighty

In fact  it refers to the

" Large island in the north Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 sq mi), Great Britain is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, and the ninth-largest island in the world.,surrounding islands, form the British Isles archipelago".

Derivation of Great

The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain (μεγάλη Βρεττανία megale Brettania) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρὰ Βρεττανία mikra Brettania) in his work Almagest (147–148 AD). In his later work, Geography (c. 150 AD), he gave the islands the names Alwion, Iwernia, and Mona (the Isle of Man), suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest. The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island
After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) refers to the island as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from BritainThe term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, and James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee". It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland".

 Just like Donald Trump "lets make the USA great again. "Great" Britain is part of nationalistic agenda which Unionists with "lets put the Great back in Britain spout.

Brexit has seen a ridiculeous nostalgia for the Empire ,  and as Mr Amderson puts it "contributed to the collective delusional madness that is Brexit".

There is nothing "Great" about Britain apart for the size of the Island the majority of us live on,