Miriam Margolyes Says Britain Has Lost Its Soul and She Wants to Fix It

Miriam Margolyes has never been one to hold back, and at 85, she’s not about to start. The beloved actor has spoken out about what she calls a Britain that has become almost unrecognisable, saying the hostile political climate of today feels like the worst she has ever lived through.

Margolyes, best known to younger audiences as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films and to pretty much everyone else as one of the most outspoken voices in British public life, has written candidly about her feelings towards the state of the nation. She describes a country that has lost its heart, and says nearly everyone she speaks to feels the same way.

‘People feel adrift,’ she writes. ‘They don’t understand or feel a connection to the place they thought they knew.’ For someone who has watched Britain go through decades of political upheaval, that is a striking thing to say.

Born in Oxford in 1941, Margolyes grew up in a country still rebuilding from the Second World War. She has seen governments come and go, watched social attitudes shift dramatically, and lived through some of the most turbulent chapters in modern British history. Yet she says what is happening now feels different, and darker.

What makes her perspective interesting is where she started politically. Margolyes was once a teenage Tory. She has spoken before about how her views shifted dramatically over the years, moving from the conservative instincts of her upbringing to becoming, in her own words, a full-throated leftist. That journey, she suggests, was shaped by paying attention to what was actually happening around her rather than sticking to inherited beliefs.

She draws on the work of historian Eric Hobsbawm, whom she knew personally, to make a point about nostalgia. Hobsbawm argued that people tend to invent a version of the past that suits their own purposes, that the real past was often quite different from how we remember it. Margolyes acknowledges this is true, but says that does not stop her longing for the sense of safety and community she associates with an earlier Britain.

The actor is not shy about pointing the finger. She talks about bad guys in politics and says there is still time to save the country from them, though she is clear that doing so will require people to actually engage rather than give up. Apathy, she suggests, is exactly what those in power are counting on.

At 85, Margolyes is refreshingly honest about the realities of getting older. She jokes about pelvic floor weakness in the same breath as talking about the collapse of political decency, which is very on brand for her. But underneath the humour is a genuine frustration and sadness about the direction the country has taken.

She pushes back against the idea that old age automatically brings wisdom. People remain who they have always been, she argues, only more so. What matters is making peace with that, and with each other. It is a simple enough idea, but in a country that feels increasingly divided along every possible line, it lands with some weight.

Margolyes has always been willing to court controversy. She has made headlines over the years for her blunt opinions on politics, Brexit, and various public figures. Some find her exhausting. Others think she is one of the few people in public life willing to say what many are thinking.

What she is describing here is not a party political argument so much as a cultural one. The sense that something has shifted in how people relate to each other, to their communities, and to the idea of Britain itself. Whether you agree with her politics or not, it is hard to argue that the national mood is particularly cheerful right now.

Her call to action is not complicated. She wants people to care, to stay engaged, and to resist the temptation to retreat into cynicism. Coming from someone who has been around long enough to see the country at its best and its worst, that feels worth listening to.