2019 is a year of potentially momentous change for the United Kingdom, and in a continuation of his new series, Neil MacGregor visits five different countries to talk to leading political, business and cultural figures to find out how they, as individuals and as members of their broader communities, see Britain.

Today he's on the other side of the world. Australia's links with Britain appear, on the surface, to be uniquely close. For over two hundred years we've shared values, political structures and most crucially we still share a monarch. Neil talks to a one time representative of that monarch, former Governor General Quentin Bryce as well as Indigenous scholar and activist Marcia Langton, historian Stuart Macintyre and comedian Suren Jayemanne.
Quentin Bryce recalls visiting the UK in the 60s when everything seemed possible as values shifted and attitudes changed. But it was still viewed by many as the mother country and when we joined the EU in 1973 Australia felt the shock and the hurt sharply.
Marcia Langton draws on a longer perspective with Britain's role in the Australian story now being re-fashioned to form a more realistic view of the nation's long, long pre-colonial story. By contrast, Suren Jayemanne, born in Melbourne but of a Malaysian mother and Sri Lankan father, sees Britain from the standpoint of Australia's new and expanding immigrant population. But he too feels a sense of kinship with the UK although without the powerful empathy of former Australians who flocked to help Britain in two world wars and in the process helped forge their own identity.
Neil discovers that while Australians see us with a sustaining warmth it's also with an acceptance that we really are a country on the other side of the world and with the majority of their trade and exchanges going on in Asia and the Pacific Britain is further away than its ever been.

Producer: Tom Alban Show less