Thirty of the very best of British

For those who care little for football – still less for Manchester United – the excitement that greeted the announcement last week of Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement might have seemed baffling.

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, broke off a report about the Queen’s Speech to tell John Humphrys that Sir Alex was the “greatest living Briton”. The following day, he reappeared in the Today programme’s prestigious 8.10am slot to give a lengthy justification for the moniker. Not to be outdone, the BBC then compared his resignation to the fall of the Berlin Wall: “You knew it was inevitable at some stage, but when it happens few can believe it.”

Away from the hagiography, the bare statistics are more helpful for the layman trying to work out what all the fuss is about. Sir Alex has lost only 267 of his 1,498 games, winning 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League titles and five FA cups. During his 26 years at Manchester United, 1,146 other managers from the top four division came and went.

He has also done more for the economy than the last few Chancellors of the Exchequer, speaking at Harvard Business School, helping to sell 1.4 million shirts worldwide every season (the joint highest, with Real Madrid) and single-handedly keeping chewing gum manufacturers afloat. On the day he announced his departure, Manchester United’s shares fell 4.5 per cent.

Remarkable stuff, and a great Briton indeed. To mark his departure, The Sunday Telegraph has compiled a list of other greatest living Britons – and British things. And while the list is, of course, completely subjective, it is likely to reach consensus on one thing: there is not a single greatest living politician in sight...

Greatest member of the Royal family The Queen

In the hot seat for more than twice as long as Sir Alex Ferguson, the Queen has also had to deal with more than her fair share of talented but spoilt charges. Dutiful, inscrutable and, as the Olympic opening ceremony showed, almost as good at playing herself as Dame Helen Mirren.

Greatest television presenter Sir David Attenborough

Viewers regularly learn more from the nation’s favourite grandfather in a 60-minute programme than in 13 years at school. The same age as the Queen, Sir David has worked in broadcasting for 60 years, received a record 31 honorary degrees, and was once voted Britain’s most trusted celebrity.

Greatest painter David Hockney

Almost certainly the only modern artist who could call one of his works “The 25 Big Trees between Bridlington School and Morrisons Supermarket on Bessingby Road in the Semi-Egyptian Style” and still sell out a Royal Academy exhibition. A wonderful antidote to Tracey Emin and her fellow dirty-tent-dwellers.

Greatest entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard has done so much to make business exciting that we can almost forgive him the beard. He manages an enviable work-life balance, hanging out with models on Necker Island and attempting various mid-life-crisis world records when he should be making his trains run on time for under £152 each way.

Greatest inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Widely feted not only for creating the world wide web but also for a wonderfully British disinclination to make any money out of his creation. He is, however, indirectly responsible for spam emails, Twitter and the inability of anyone under 40 to concentrate on the same thing for more than 14 seconds.

Greatest architect Lord Foster

Not only has Norman Foster changed the face of London – the Great Court at the British Museum; the redesign of Trafalgar Square; the Gherkin, City Hall; the Millennium Bridge that no longer wobbles – he also succeeded in annoying the French by winning a competition to design the beautiful Millau Viaduct.

Greatest actress Dame Maggie Smith

As adept at playing a dowager Duchess in Downton Abbey as an ex-housekeeper in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Along with Homeland, Dame Maggie is the best thing about autumn weekends, even if her character professes to have no idea what a “weekend” is.

Greatest actor Sir Ian McKellen

Wonderful wizard of Middle-earth, trouser-dropping King Lear and, by some margin, the funniest cameo on Ricky Gervais’s Extras. Currently relishing being vicious to Sir Derek Jacobi in ITV’s comedy of the same name.

Greatest musician David Bowie

Pop chameleon, self-declared “closet heterosexual” and current subject of a sold-out V&A retrospective. Arguably the only good thing to have come out of the Seventies.

Greatest explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Proud that you completed the London Marathon in under five hours? Sir Ranulph ran seven in seven days on seven continents when he was 59 – four months after a double heart bypass operation. He has also climbed Everest, despite a lifelong fear of heights.

Greatest entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth

The 85-year-old host of Strictly Come Dancing jokingly criticised Sir Alex last week for taking early retirement at 71. Brucie is kept young by his wife, a former Miss World, who at 55 was born 15 years after his career started. Missing the limelight of performance, he is about to start a one-man tour. Hasn’t he done well?

Greatest Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave

His gold medal tally might have been surpassed by Sir Chris Hoy's, but Sir Steve, who played a key role in winning the London bid, remains the Olympian’s Olympian: modest, generous, kind, intelligent, strong, dedicated and just a little bit dull.

Greatest footballer Sir Bobby Charlton

Not only is he a better footballer than David Beckham, his 21st century equivalent, he also has a better hairstyle. A member of the 1966 World Cup-winning team, he is England’s all-time leading goal scorer with 49 goals in 106 appearances.

Greatest cook Delia Smith

Less pouty than Nigella, less ubiquitous than Jamie, less swear-y than Gordon, Delia learned to cook aged 21 to impress a new boyfriend. She went on to teach the nation to do the same, selling 21 million books and becoming the UK’s best-selling cookery author. Just one flaw: an inexplicable love for Norwich City FC.

Greatest playwright Alan Bennett

Described variously as a “national teddy bear”, “the prose laureate” and “the curmudgeon laureate”, Bennett would make the grade for History Boys alone. Just as good are The Lady in the Van, Writing Home, Talking Heads and The Uncommon Reader, hailed sniffily by the Guardian as the best thing about the Jubilee.

Greatest novelist Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel has single-handedly turned historical fiction mainstream, with her numerous fans looking forward to the final instalment of the Cromwell and Henry VIII trilogy (and, no doubt, a third Booker Prize). Following her comments on the Duchess of Cambridge, which were a great deal more subtle than she was given credit for, perhaps she will also write a more contemporary novel about the Duchess’s brother-in-law, a modern-day, red-haired, soldier-prince with an inability to keep his clothes on.

Greatest screenwriter Richard Curtis

Whatever you think of the Love Actually schmaltz-fest, Four Weddings and a Funeral remains one of the finest British films ever made, its scenes still faithfully recreated in numerous Home Counties marquees between May and September. Curtis is also responsible, with varying degrees of culpability, for Comic Relief, Blackadder, the resurrection of Bill Nighy’s career and Hugh Grant’s apparent belief that he is some sort of politician.

Greatest scientist Professor Stephen Hawking

Theoretical physicist and author of what is often described as the world’s least-read bestseller, those who have bought, read and [italics] understood A Brief History of Time assure the rest of us that it is very clever. His work includes the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often referred to as Hawking radiation. He’s not as good at the piano as Brian Cox, though.

Greatest broadcast journalist David Dimbleby

Overcoming the disadvantages of his birth, David Dimbleby has risen to become the best broadcast journalist in the UK since his father. Less shouty than John Humphrys, less offensive than Jeremy Paxman, less reliant on his eyebrow than Fiona Bruce, and more likely to get to the end of a sentence than James Naughtie.

Greatest fictional character James Bond

^{Jane Seymour and Roger Moore in the James Bond classic Live and Let Die}

James Bond, wrote Paul Johnson, was cooked up from “three base ingredients: all unhealthy, all thoroughly English – the sadism of the school bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude snob-cravings of a suburban adult.” We still love him, though – this sadistic, sexist composite of six different actors and a million overgrown adolescent fantasies. As Kingsley Amis, who was old enough to know better, said: “We don’t want to have Bond for dinner or go golfing with Bond or talk to Bond. We want to be Bond.”

And apart from the people, which places and institutions put the great into Britain?

Greatest church St Paul’s Cathedral

Westminster Abbey might have been the scene for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but St Paul’s cathedral has witnessed the funerals of Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Churchill and Thatcher, the peace services for the end of both world wars and the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales. Following a recent £40 million restoration, cleaning more than one million cubic feet of stone, it is currently looking better than at any time since 1711. Camping outside optional.

Greatest holiday destination Cornwall

Sunny beaches, delicious, protected pasties, cream teas, the Eden Project, cheap second homes to annoy the locals, Jack Wills shops and, best of all, large enough to avoid bumping into David Cameron.

Greatest city Edinburgh

A manageable version of London with no Tube, fewer estate agents and the ability to escape the city in under two hours. Quite chilly from early September until late July, though.

Greatest radio show Just A Minute

Running since 1967, the hilarious format has remained faithful to the vision of Ian Messiter, the show’s creator, whose daydreaming as a 13-year-old schoolboy was interrupted by a master bellowing at him to repeat what he had been saying “without hesitation or repetition”. When Messiter failed, he was caned in front of the class (although, sadly, he chose to substitute this element for “deviation” on the radio show).

Greatest view from Westminster Bridge

Inspiration for Wordsworth, countless tourists and jaded commuters wondering if they are indeed tired of life as well as London. Big Ben to the west, the City to the east and if you squint, you can just about block out the view of the Shard.

Greatest novel Birdsong

Sebastian Faulks’s novel was a classic of the Nineties. Sexy and shocking in almost equal measure, well-thumbed copies can still be seen on almost every bookshelf.

Greatest university Cambridge

Cambridge might be younger than Oxford, but it is prettier and has won almost twice as many Nobel Prizes.

Greatest train journey Fort William to Mallaig

Fall asleep in Milton Keynes, wake up in the West Highlands among lichen-covered oak trees, babbling brooks and wild deer. Known unofficially as The Deerstalker, it is a far cry from the 7.12 from Tunbridge Wells.

Greatest song Hey Jude

The unofficial anthem for sweaty weddings and Olympic closing ceremonies. So well known, in fact, that the crowd can happily take over, even if Sir Paul McCartney is off key and behind the beat.

Greatest brand Marks & Spencer

^{Rosie Huntington-Whiteley models the Autograph spring 2013 lingerie collection for Marks and Spencers}

Its clothing range might have suffered recently – perhaps linked to Samantha Cameron’s revelation that she buys her husband’s boxer shorts there – but the chain remains the closest thing we have to a nationalised retail outlet. Plus its bags are less embarrassing than Primark’s.