Why the British Take Glory in Defeat

For a country with a rich history of victories, Britain has a curious tendency to celebrate the defeats.

Boris Johnson, the runaway favorite to succeed Theresa May as prime minister, sparked controversy this week following a pledge to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union by October 31 “do or die.” Rory Stewart, one of more than a dozen candidates who challenged Johnson for the leadership, pointed out that the phrase do or die comes from “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” a poem by Alfred Tennyson honoring Britain’s defeat at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, during the Crimean War. The line, in fact, is “do and die.”

For the British, that die. The Light Brigade suffered a massacre at the hands of a Russian artillery battery in what amounted to a suicidal attack against the overwhelming force of a well-organized enemy, which was subsequently immortalized in verse: “Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die / Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.” As it happens, it is also the denouement of Robert Burns’s ode to Robert the Bruce and the Scottish victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314: “Lay the proud usurpers low! / Tyrants fall in every foe! / Liberty’s in every blow! / Let us do or die!”