If you had to live in a historical period of British history, when would it be?

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AdventurousJunket160@reddit

Roman Britain as they brought along innovative infrastructure and central heating, you would probably do quite well in the wine trade or being a tiler.

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Elizabethan England, somewhere between 1570 and 1609 (around when Shakespeare died) I’d want to be a merchant or Tradesman (as opposed to being a literal serf) but a middle class was beginning to develop. England was just waking up to itself as a nation of global importance and the culture was bursting to life. Ordinary people were beginning to assert some cultural identity distinct from feudalism and the system hadn’t yet repackaged serfdom into factory labour. And I could go and watch a Shakespeare premiere.

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King_Six_of_Things@reddit

1990's

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Hollyhop_Drive@reddit

1990s.

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Opening-Olive-9072@reddit

2001

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swampman23512@reddit

The period immediately after the Romans left. Probably absolutely awful to experience, but I just wanna know what the hell was going on.

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Hot-Palpitation4888@reddit

I think it depends on where you were? I have to admit the 60s would be cool; if not to see England win the World Cup

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Current_Mongoose_844@reddit

1910

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Emotional_Ad2648@reddit

This really depends? Am I rich? If so id pick 1905 England, as an idle rich gentry with a whole empire as a playground.

As an ordinary person I’d go 1995 England.

I had this conversation with my dad, a while back. And he said to me that if I went back in time to the 70’s in the UK, I’d struggle. Different currency (non metric) no cash machines, very little in the way of modern conveniences. If you were lucky central hearing, if not coal fires. Being paid every week, and having to have cash on you the whole time. It would definately be a learning curve..

He also said that he believed that society was less broken in general, in the 70’s. But that violence was more tolerated. Wife beaters were not ostracised, unless it was really bad, and people would fight in pubs way more frequently

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Instalab@reddit

Right now is the best

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KingStevoI@reddit

Itd have to be modern times due to medicine.

This said, the pre Norman era and the Elizabethan period are very appealing for me, historically.

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Sad_Sultana@reddit

Early 2000s

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dsanft@reddit

One with antibiotics for sure

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Nameisnotmine@reddit

I would not. As a woman of colour this time has the best rights and freedoms for me. White men get to go back to whenever with few issues. Everyone else looses rights and freedoms the further back they go. So no thank you to time travel

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historynerd1990@reddit

You might be surprised in Roman britain to be honest. Look up the beachy head lady, a sub-saharan black African woman buried in England during the roman times. She was clearly in the upper echelons of society, adorned with jewelry, isotope analysis shows she had a rich and varied diet etc. There were plenty of people of colour in britain during the roman period (long before the first Angle or Saxon set foot here), and they weren't slaves or second class citizens, but members of the soldiery and ruling elite.

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DreamtISawJoeHill@reddit

A recent study with new DNA analysis has suggested that the Beachy Head Woman was likely a Briton and not from sub-Saharan Africa as previously believed. However there would certainly have been African peoples taking part in the conquest of Britain from 43AD. I expect any time frame during occupation to the withdrawal in 410AD a person of African heritage would be uncommon but not necessarily alien to the native population.

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historynerd1990@reddit

Can you provide the study that claims that she is not sub-saharan African? Because from what I've read the strontium isotope analysis says she is...

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DreamtISawJoeHill@reddit

Yes sure, its a fairly recent article. Here

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historynerd1990@reddit

Cheers mate I'll give it a read

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cegsywegs@reddit

Haven’t you seen bridgerton?

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Nameisnotmine@reddit

I’m a poor. No nobility here 🤪

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boringfantasy@reddit

1990-2000s

Widely regarded as peak of human civilisation.

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YatesScoresinthebath@reddit

Tbf in the 2000s everyone said it was the 80s

Ten more years people will say it's 2015

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boringfantasy@reddit

I would bet you my lifes savings nobody will hold 2015 above any year in the 90s literally ever

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Two-Space@reddit

Well I remember the 2010s and I don’t remember the 90s, so how am I supposed to hold the 90s higher?

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Liturginator9000@reddit

people that grew up in that era will because they'll have no idea of the 90s

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boringfantasy@reddit

Opposite is happening. Gen Z has brought back the aero aesthetic despite not remembering it (mostly)

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Nolsoth@reddit

No we didn't.

The 80s were not that great, but the 90s fucking rocked.

End of the cold war, the early internet.

Great movies.

DVDs, cds, the digital revolution.

Shit was affordable and convenient.

The early 00s rocked as well, it's after 2010 that shit Started going badly south.

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bert2612@reddit

True. Music peaked in the 90s too

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jaminbob@reddit

That's not true at all. We all remembered the awful food for a start.

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Darkgreenbirdofprey@reddit

The matrix called it.

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Beartato4772@reddit

Even the Matrix movies went downhill from that point.

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ExaminationOld6941@reddit

Says who?

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Don_Alosi@reddit

Anyone that was born before the twin towers fell

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ExaminationOld6941@reddit

What like peope from say Bosnia or Iraq?

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Don_Alosi@reddit

good point!

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CelDidNothingWrong@reddit

It was, the films from that era are so hopeful

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Ready-Assistance-883@reddit

90s-2007 for sure

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EasyCheesecake1@reddit

Depends if I was rich or poor, the Victorian era is probably the worst time in the last 1000 years to be a regular working person. The early modern era, say Elizabethan, would probably be my overall choice but if it wasn't the modern era.

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mags-ammo@reddit

I'd like to see the Romans build London in real time.

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OddSign2828@reddit

I think you have a very rose-tinted view of Victorian England. Crowding, disease, malnutrition, smog.

I reckon early 2000s. Hope of a new millennium, before it feels like the real bad shit started to hit.

That being said, every era has its good elements and bad elements (before I get arguments against my view). But modern medicine is something I couldn’t turn my nose up at.

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HopeMrPossum@reddit

As OP implies they’d keep their memory, absolutely 2000s or 2010s. I’d just make a fortune on the stock market, then change the world for the better.

If it couldn’t be a meta pick like that, then Roman Britain.

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dugerz@reddit

as long as medicine doesn't cost crippling debt for basic treatment

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OddSign2828@reddit

Good thing this is a UK subreddit

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dugerz@reddit

That's the weirdest -43 downvote I ever got.

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OddSign2828@reddit

Not that weird, debt for medicine doesn’t exist in the UK

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Accurate_Might_3430@reddit

Oh honey :(

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Night-Angel1994@reddit

Queen Victoria lived in more squalor than an average earner in Modern Britain and that was our “peak”

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Responsible-Cut-1024@reddit

Genuine question, when you refer to the “real bad started to hit” in the 2000s.

Are you saying that’s worse than the crowding, disease, malnutrition and smog?

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Extreme_Question2814@reddit

1990s

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-GuardPasser-@reddit

Amazing. Everyone picks a time before mass immigration.

You bunch of disingenuous, virtue signalling, dopes.

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llynllydaw_999@reddit

Apart from all the people who said that now is the best time? Also people have been mass immigrating to this island since people have existed. Beaker People, Celts, Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, Normans, etc, etc. Often with dire consequences for the existing inhabitants.

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-GuardPasser-@reddit

Really? We've had more immigration in the last 25 years than the whole of the last 1000 years

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llynllydaw_999@reddit

I'm referring to the past 20,000 years.

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-GuardPasser-@reddit

Sigh. If you cant see the difference between thousands of people a year Vs almost millions, then you're beyond help.

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zwifter11@reddit

A time when I could have my own home, not have to work, not have to pay bills and live off the vegetables and chickens grown on my own land. Self sufficient with no capitalist rat race.

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Honest-Cover9513@reddit

I'm a woman. Now is the best time imo, imperfect though it is. I also have a genetic condition that I can live with pretty well today, but would have killed me in another era, probably in pregnancy, which, as a woman, I wouldn't have been in a position to refuse.

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mab0106@reddit

Fascinating though some of the possibilities are, as a queer person, I don't think I fancy going much further back than maybe the 80s/90s (though of course the 80s were not exactly great times for many queer people either).

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bob_nugget_the_3rd@reddit

2000's good times

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octoprickle@reddit

I'd check out 1349 and see if there's any calamities on the horizon

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0rangesAndLemons@reddit

Id love to experience being a teenager in the 90s but Im grateful for living now as well

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Beartato4772@reddit

It was pretty damn good.

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Beartato4772@reddit

Can I just have the 90s and 2000s again?

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Geek_reformed@reddit

I would like to live in Enid Blytons mid century. The sort of fictionalised and idealised 30s or 50s we see in her work and on TV in shows like Father Brown. Minus WW2, racism, homophobia. But with lots of cake, summer fates and cask beer.

In reality, I think the 70s onwards. While the 70s and the 80s saw some pretty hard times, I am assuming I would be comfortably middle class. I grew up during the 80s and 90s so I know the 90s and early 00s was a pretty decent time, but I think the late 70s onwards was likely peak time to be a child. Then a teen in the 80s and then my 20s in the 90s.

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Sparko_Marco@reddit

Around 1750 to 1800 because thats when my home town was one of the busiest ports in England and it would be awesome to see it at its peak back then. I would also like to witness the attack by the Americans and see how much of the stories are true.

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GrapefruitHuge6732@reddit

i’d just be an adult during my childhood in the 90s 😂 or i’d just live through 2012 again the last time anyone felt any hope

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Geek_reformed@reddit

Fx

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Used-Flamingo-4320@reddit

90s or a time where I could be stationed over in the Middle East during the empire. I’d like to wear khaki and shop in the local souq. In the evenings I’d drink gin and tonic.

I’d probably have to have a moustache aswell.

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practicalcabinet@reddit

I really like steam railways, so I would go for my when my favourite locomotive types were commonplace, which would be around the late 1920s and early 1930s.

However, of course, I would want to avoid getting involved in either of the world wars, but hopefully if I got a job on the railways I would be too essential to send to war.

There's also all the social injustices and lack of health benefits and things, but this is all hypothetical.

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Green-Caregiver416@reddit

I’m so insanely nostalgic for the 90s/early 00s. I grew up in that era and it was incredible, kind of wish my whole life revolved around that era. So wouldn’t have wanted to grow up much earlier, but equally would love to be a working adult in that time period. Since I’ve joined the work force in the lates 00s there have been so many crisis’s.

If a genie told me I could roll back the world to 95 again I’d do it in a heartbeat

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hyperdistortion@reddit

Unless you can guarantee you’d be part of the wealthy elite, any time before World War II is foolhardy, I’d say. And even then, being rich just makes things easier, not actually easy.

Hell, even in the post-WW2 era things aren’t exactly great until… probably the 90s? End of the Cold War, economic recovery post-1992, housing far more affordable… there’s a lot to be said for the 90s. And the turn of the millennium even more so.

Agent Smith was right: the end of the 20th century is the peak of our civilisation.

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these_metal_hands@reddit

Maybe the 80's?

Cheap houses, coke was going main stream, people has disposable income and optimism. It wasn't so far back that I would have to worry about disease, poverty or war. Not so modern that the seams of capitalism are starting to come apart.

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Puzzleheaded_Drink76@reddit

Perhaps a nice date with Patrick Bateman?

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bigolchitter@reddit

80’s in LA would be a great time, 80’s in the north of England was different story, 80’s was the death of british industry

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blurdyblurb@reddit

Yeah, i don't recall coke going mainstream in 1989 Halifax! 🤣

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cbawiththismalarky@reddit

My £25 a week YTS wage barely kept me fed

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cbawiththismalarky@reddit

Disposable income in the 80s lol

I wasn't out buying houses on my YTS wage in the 80s

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Intelligent-Ad5258@reddit

I’d just like to walk around get a feel for the area then get back and have a good bath

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Box_of_rodents@reddit

Depends how much money and titles you have really

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Deep_Banana_6521@reddit

Nothing before the 1980s. We don't know how good we have it. The past wasn't very nice.

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Metrobolist3@reddit

Yeah fuck any time preceding modern medicine.

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Night-Angel1994@reddit

I always think this

Some Roman guy, ah grazed my leg. Well, that’s the end of me

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dugerz@reddit

I've a feeling they've said that for many centuries

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Metrobolist3@reddit

Well yeah I guess. The leeches and mercury guys probably thought they were the cat's pyjamas but lets draw a line in the sand somewhere around the discovery of Penicillin, eh?

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bio_d@reddit

Leeches are still used in modern medicine

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DramaticHeadwound@reddit

Yes, in specific and science-backed applications (quackery aside).
We're no longer covering someone in leeches because they have ghosts in their blood, or big ears.

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dugerz@reddit

Definitely. A good reason not to believe in God is that he made humanity live without decent medicine for so long

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Pip1710@reddit

I wouldn't want to live. But with a time machine, I would love to explore Europe between the late medieval and early modern British periods. I think the transition between completely different ways for our society to function and how it slowly transforms into something that begins to look like today would be fascinating to watch in real time.

To live, if I get to keep my equivalent lifestyle, take me to the '60s. As a middle-class white with a professional qualification, I can't think of a better period.

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Night-Angel1994@reddit

2025 is the only right answer with a note of lottery numbers

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Password-Llama@reddit

Edwardian Era. Purely because you didn't need a visa to enter a third of the countries in the world - because we owned them.

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Ok_Option_3@reddit

Hogarth's London. Sure disease is rife, I live in a garret and my live expectancy is 30 - but the drunken parties are excellent!

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Acceptable-Friend-42@reddit

Something to numb the syphilis, cholera and tuberculosis eh.

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franki-pinks@reddit

As a woman I’m safer now than at any other time so I’m going to go with now. Although I would have loved to be my age now in the 90s.

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ninjomat@reddit

Assuming I’m rich/aristocracy I think Britain’s golden era was the 200 years or so from the mid 1600s to the mid 1800s.

That’s really the period when England and then the UK went from a European backwater to the dominant power on the globe with the most advanced economy and intellectual culture in the world.

Particularly the Industrial Revolution I reckon would have been fascinating to see so I guess that would be the first half of the 19th century in particular right up to the great exhibition in 1851

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txakori@reddit

I’d personally choose that brief period between the departure of the Romans, and the arrival of the English. Just to live through Arthur’s time.

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Ill_Yogurt_4659@reddit

I’d say the 70s. Everything’s cheaper and you could make real business moves then.

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Global-Mix-3358@reddit

As a millionaire 18 year-old starting in 1960. All that amazing music for the first time. Best cars. Best drugs. Great fashion and girls in miniskirts. Sign me up.

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Craicriture@reddit

The Victorian era smelled a lot worse than it looked!

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andrew0256@reddit

First off it's no good imprinting 2026 standards of hygiene, medicine, technology etc. on your chosen period. It's called relative and back then they worked with what they had.

With that in mind I would choose the mid 1960s. Work wise traditional jobs abounded and you could support your family on labourer's wages. Trade training was provided by the state via an employers levy and permanent jobs were plentiful after you qualified. For women the pull gave them sexual freedom and choice. As a consequence unwanted pregnancies dropped as did the birth rate.

Your choices of music were the best they had ever been. People had the money to collect their favourites. Culture in general was both vibrant and traditional, albeit increasingly American influenced.

Yes there were downsides in terms of secondary education for those failing the 11 plus but comprehensive schools were becoming more numerous.

Car ownership was the on the rise giving people choice about where they lived and holidayed. The railways suffered but changed always has consequences.

I could go on.

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Time-Fix-5135@reddit

I feel like the 90s were pretty historical

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notThaTblondie@reddit

The 1990's. Without a doubt.

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Terrible-Group-9602@reddit

Roman Britain

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arashi256@reddit

I imagine the reality would be very different and much stinkier and gross than we've been lead to believe through modern media. I too am a big fan of the Victorian era, but I am experiencing that in my nice central-heated house with electric lighting and modern plumbing and some concept of disease transmission and treatment. I think life for most people day-to-day was probably fairly brutal and short.

I'd go back to post-war Britain and start buying houses, though. And I could watch the old black and white sci-fi classics in the cinema for cheap.

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MurdockMow@reddit

Now. I’m autistic and life is still tremendously difficult. To think to live in any other century except ours just wouldn’t make sense for me.

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PantodonBuchholzi@reddit

Yesterday.

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Bastrato@reddit

10000bc

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hallouminati_pie@reddit

All of these answers really seem to be from a Anglo/White perspective (no animosity from me). But honestly as a minority, despite all the horridness of the far right in this country, the best time to be in the UK is now.

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AvoriazInSummer@reddit

I’d live as close to now as possible, as we’ve never had it so good, honestly. And I love the Internet.

I’d visit the celts, specifically Boudicca. I’d be really interested to see how much of her story is true and how much is fiction.

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Ok-Middle8656@reddit

I’d have to pick Bronze Age, before the Romans arrived. Potentially violent times, but I’d just love to see what the country looked like before we ruined it with farming and industry.

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SupportNo9543@reddit

Already ruined by then, you'd have to go back neolithic style, to 500 years after after the ice had retreated,

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dugerz@reddit

You like suffering?

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Actual-Morning110@reddit

You are into swamps??

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Kaurblimey@reddit

90s Manchester!

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giveitsometechno@reddit

Am I rich or still poor?

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Vegetable_Stomach236@reddit

Pre Roman bog dwelling

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concretepigeon@reddit

If you could guarantee you’re rich, regency London would probably be a laugh. If there’s a risk you’re gonna be poor then you’ve got to go for the 60s or 90s.

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dugerz@reddit

You've still suffer terrible ill health. And worms.

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Honest-University589@reddit

Historial? Every historical event in England is a very bleak world compared to what it is now in terms of medicine and stability.

For the fun of it though, 117. Ave Imperator!

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Brief_Research_9062@reddit

1851, perhaps?

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LiquoricePigTrotters@reddit

1990s

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KeyJunket1175@reddit

It's quite antiquated right now mate

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xxx654@reddit

Now. Yes there are problems but every age has had them. We live in a safer era with a lower risk of violence than any in recorded history with greater access to healthcare, medicine, education, literacy than ever before.

Are there things I miss from my youth (in the 90s) of course but things are generally better now.

The cost of housing relative to the median wage used to be better, but for most other big things that make an average life better, now is the time.

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wg_wgwgwg@reddit

The '60s.

See the Rolling Stones and have a Coke.

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