This Estelle, is the best question asked on Answerbank for a long time, and I don't know the answer. The first question must be 'Whose?
A wise French woman, many years ago said to me, "If you want to understand the culture of France, a good method would be to look at the index of all the street names and Metro stations of Paris and research their origins".
I don't know how you do it for Britain, maybe the same method works to some extent, but I fear that just as the definition of poetry might be 'that which is lost in translation' the definition of British culture might be 'that which we are presently giving away by ignorance and apathy'.
Beware of smart-*** answers though, please come back and say how you got on. Good luck.