1. Big Ben is the name of the bell inside St Stephen's clock tower attached to the Houses of Parliament, and is as famous for its sound as for the clock faces that surround it.

As well as providing the opening sequence for the old ITV News At Ten, the chime of Big Ben is also the sound that ushers in each New Year, broadcast on TV and radio across the world.

Find out about the building The Clock is famous for its reliability, telling the time to within one second’s accuracy, but extreme weather conditions can affect the mechanism. In 1962, for example, the New Year was ten minutes late owing to heavy snow!

2. Have a nice sit-down with a cuppa, maybe a chocolate digestive too. What could be more quintessentially English?

The most normal thing in the world is a cup of tea. Yet the tea we drink isn't English at all. There's a good chance the tea cup isn’t either... But wherever you go, right across England, you'll find cups of tea being served from your everyday greasy spoon café to the Ritz.

The story of tea takes in all sorts of aspects of England's history, many of them unsavoury. It's the story of trade and clippers and empire, the story of medicine and hygiene and bone china.

Afternoon tea (4 o’clock )

Afternoon tea became popular about one hundred and fifty years ago, when rich ladies invited their friends to their houses for an afternoon cup of tea. They started offering their visitors sandwiches and cakes too. Soon everyone was enjoying Afternoon tea.

• This is a small meal, not a drink. Traditionally it consists of tea (or coffee) served with either of the following: Freshly baked scones served with cream and jam (Known as a cream tea)

• Afternoon tea sandwiches - thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

• Assorted pastries

• Afternoon tea is not common these days because most adults go out to work. However, you can still have Afternoon tea at the many tea rooms around England.

3. Fish and Chips. The nation's favoured takeaway dish since the late Victorian era, fish and chips has only lately been challenged for supremacy by Indian food. Notwithstanding that, it is what sustained working communities in towns and inner cities, providing filling and nutritious sustenance to those who had to endure long working days. Even in wartime, although supplies might be scarce, fish and chips were never subject to the ration.

4. Fancy a pint? Is there a more cheering invitation than to accompany your best mate down to the local to sup one of England's finest products? Served at best from a hand-pump drawing the beer up from the cask in which it matures in the pub cellar, no other beverage is so symbolic of British national history.

5. The English public house. There are more than 60,000 such premises licensed to serve alcohol in the UK. Country pubs generally retain the most traditional air, with cask-conditioned ales served by hand-pump, a range of home-cooked food on offer, and a cheery, convivial ambience.

6. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, the feast that has become synonymous with the English nation. British beef may have had its troubles in recent years, but it has always been at the centre of British national story. In the 18th century, it was celebrated in song as part of British red-blooded heritage of liberty, so different from their neighbours on the continent, where they had only the thin gruel of tyranny to eat.

7. Doctor WHO. Ex-ter-minate! Ex-ter-minate! You will be ex-ter-minated!! Or rather you would be if you didn't have the only surviving Time Lord in the universe on your side, in the shape of the ever-resourceful and ever-eccentric Doctor.

Since his first incarnation in 1963 (he's now on to the tenth, and those are just the ones we know about), the Doctor has been repelling Daleks, Cybermen, Sea Devils and other cosmic irritants, on behalf of an often blithely ignorant humanity. Just because he likes us. We'll meet some of the Doctor's many assistants over the years, and also find out how that unforgettable theme tune was created.

8. The Lake District national park in the ancient counties of Cumberland and Westmorland is one of England's best-loved regions of outstanding natural beauty. A hugely varied landscape, it has sheer mountainsides, lush valleys, and tranquil tarns and of course the great Lakes themselves, and it was famously where William Wordsworth came upon his "host of golden daffodils".

9. The oak has always been seen as the national tree of England. Its great height, age and strength made it the king of the English forest, and a symbol of endurance. The oak's sturdy timber was used to build the frames of houses, barns and halls, and the ships of Francis Drake and Horatio Nelson - the "heart of oak" celebrated in the official march of the British Navy. The tree was also sacred to the Druids and the Anglo-Saxons, and it sheltered an English king, Charles II, when he was on the run from his enemies.

10. The red phone box with its crown insignia, domed roof and the helpful name TELEPHONE across all four sides will never be surpassed as a design icon. Designed by architect Giles Gilbert Scott in the 1920s, and going through successive modifications until it achieved perfection in 1936, it remains a visible symbol of an England otherwise fast disappearing.