From Brighton to Bradford, from Suffolk to Somerset, I have explored some remarkable buildings and structures that, in different ways, have helped to shed light on the way modern Britain has developed.
A lot of the time in modern Britain, certainly in urban life, we barely have any contact at all with the people around us.
We need to show that we know and understand and can reflect today's Britain. Today we don't.
They don't think we're in touch with modern Britain, or understand modern Britain or like modern Britain.
Britain has moved on. It is a radically different country from that which shaped New Labour.
If you don't speak English, then there is no way you can take full advantage of the opportunities that modern Britain has to offer you.
As ever with modern Britain, we are let down by a vast, over-manned, over-funded, hidebound, obstructive, box-ticking and incompetent bureaucracy.
We should be the natural home for younger voters. But today we're not. Because too often we sound like people who just don't like contemporary Britain.
The old men running the industry just have not got a clue. They've got to come to terms with the fact that Britain is no longer a totally white place where people ride horses, wear long frocks and drink tea. The national dish is no longer fish and chips; it's curry.
London can be a platform to look at what living in contemporary Britain is all about.
Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence
We will reflect the country we aspire to govern, and the sound of modern Britain's is a complex harmony, not a male voice choir.
We don't need to chase a nostalgic rendering of Britain as it never was and never can be: we need instead an understanding of who we really are and what a happy, prosperous, just nation might look like.
Britain is no longer totally a white place where people ride horses, wear long frocks, and drink tea. The national dish is no longer fish and chips, it's curry.
