“So London and Dubrovnik are roughly 2,300 km apart, and you might well think that they have nothing in common, you would be wrong,” I opened my lecture on The Ties That Bond – Connections Between Great Britain and Dubrovnik.
“I promised my wife that I wouldn’t be too boring so let’s get going,” I added.
A few weeks (probably longer) ago the Dubrovnik Libraries asked me if I would be interested in giving this lecture. And whilst I am used to being in front of the camera, or appearing publicly through the media, somehow this event made me nervous.
I recalled the “6P’s” lesson that a former boss in the UK had taught me - Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. I wrote pages and pages, finding comfort in the fact that I was working.
The more I dug the more information I found. I was starting to surprise myself.
And what was even more of an eye-opened was the number of connections Dubrovnik had brought to the UK. In a country with over 60 million people, and one that sailed the world, you would probably expect British influence in the region, but one the flip side a Republic with only a few thousand inhabitants to have left such a mark on my homeland was pleasantly astonishing.
From the first coffee house in London to Getaldić and Bošković (yes, the man that the airport is named after), from the Argosy ships that Shakespeare used in a couple of plays to maritime insurance and even early double-entry bookkeeping. I even found the first ever advert for the coffee house in the centre of London, and a couple of lines had me chuckling.
Site of the first coffee house in London
Two main complaints that Brits have about coffee here is a) it is too small and b) too cold. It would appear that it used to be served rather differently in the Republic, at least according to the advert. “Coffee should be served in at least half a pint…to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured,” wrote the ad. Sounds like Starbucks copied and pasted his ideas a few centuries later.
And flowing from the north to the south ironically the first English “tourist” to arrive came by ship, no not a cruise ship, but allegedly on a wooden galleon as he returned from the Crusades, yes, Richard the Lionheart.
Then there is somewhat of an expected gap before Nelson’s forces helped liberate the city from Napoleon and to the diplomatic relationships. The numerous Royal visits, from Queen Elizabeth in 1972, the Prince (now King) Charles in 1976.
King Edward VIII with Mrs. Wallis Simpson in Dubrovnik
The celebrities that act today as influencers, from David Beckham to Sir Roger Moore, although my own personal favourite was the visit of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the power couple of that era. In the end there were far too many connections for me to mention them all, so I ended up doing my own personal favourites.
And even St. Blaise got a mention, having a church in a tiny village in Cornwall in southwest England. A village that my wife and I just had to visit when we were walking in that part of the world a couple of years ago. They even celebrate the saint on the same day as Dubrovnik! And yes, they bless the throat as well.
I even asked ChatGPT but the first answer I got only made me laugh. “Mark Thomas plays a key role in promoting Dubrovnik to English-speaking audiences. Through his work, Thomas contributes to maintaining and enhancing the connection between Dubrovnik and Great Britain,” I added this to my presentation. Along with a highlighted and bolded key from the AI website, “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”
Of course the strongest connection, and still today, started when tourism started to flourish.
And each generation has its influencers. And when Lord Bryon wrote “the pearl of the Adriatic” it cemented the appeal of the city in British minds.
Was Lord Byron the first travel influencer?
Yes, there were no direct low-budget flights, instead it took weeks to get here, but painters, writers and poets made the journey and their “posts” and “selfies” worked then as they do today. I even asked the tourist board for some up-to-date figures on tourism, and last year almost 173,000 Brits holidayed in the south of Croatia, making them by far the most numerous.
Now you might think that with the added travel burdens of Brexit and the general world economic state that this number would have dropped this season. The opposite is the case with the number of tourists from my island up a massive 13 percent on last year.
The love story between Dubrovnik and British tourists continues, just as the romantic Lord Byron would have adored.
Read more Englishman in Dubrovnik…well, if you really want to.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the author
Mark Thomas (aka Englez u Dubrovniku) is the editor of The Dubrovnik Times. He was born and educated in the UK and moved to live in Dubrovnik in 1998. He works across a whole range of media, from a daily radio show to TV and in print. Thomas is fluent in Croatian and this column is available in Croatia on the website – Dubrovnik Vjesnik