“Classically British” literature involves an inventory of our peculiarities and habits. But it has taken us 20 years to decide to submit our favourite habits and traditions to the world’s official register, Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list, so that they can be properly preserved. The government will this year send some of them—Carol singing, basket weaving, wreath-making and cheese rolling, to name a few—to the UN, which will decide whether they deserve a place on the list.

It’s hard to argue against money for culture when anything helps, but is Unesco’s project really the solution? Unesco’s aims are noble, but we were right to be sceptical of the project. Is a global approach to culture really the best way to ward off the effects of globalisation?

How to choose what goes on the list? There is barely a thing humans do that can’t be categorised as “ culture”. Unesco’ s programme draws much inspiration from organisations that protect the natural world; but, unlike those, it has no scientific principles on which to decide the value of one item over another.

One of the criteria is that the custom must be endangered—but this doesn’t quite match to the list so far, which includes the French loaf baguette, Italian opera, Neapolitan pizza making and the Mediterranean diet. Are these really at risk? Or are they instead world famous and commercially viable? And there’s also the opposite risk, of course; that money will be wasted keeping almost-dead traditions on life support when the community around them has become indifferent. Plays will be performed and songs sung by people who have ceased to remember why, in a culture that has moved on.

But Unesco can end up actually harming the traditions it decides to protect. Unleashing a mob of tourists, with the attendant litter and chain restaurants, is not always the best way to conserve. Traditions and practices can be even more fragile than buildings once visitors arrive with cameras.

Unesco is careful with its wording—it wants to preserve “evolving” heritage. Still, not everyone reads the small print on the UN website, and there is a danger that the new fame might freeze a culture; locals performing Disneyfied versions for international tourists. If we are going to join the project, we should submit some healthy British scepticism along with our entries.

By saying “there’s also the opposite risk” in Paragraph 4, the author means that