Fantasy Land: A Field Guide to Britain’s Deliberately Unreal Places

There is a particular look that crosses a British face when someone says the words “fantasy land”. It is half suspicion, half relief. Suspicion because we are a country that likes its pleasures to come with a queue, a laminated sign and a mild sense of disappointment. Relief because, secretly, we are also a country that loves a made-up world. We just prefer ours to have a gift shop and somewhere to sit down.

Fantasy Land, as a phrase, gets used as an insult. A politician lives in fantasy land. A business plan is fantasy land. A football fan who thinks his club will win the league by signing one more midfielder is definitely in fantasy land. But as a cultural idea, fantasy land is not the opposite of reality. It is a room we build next to reality so we can practise being somewhere else for an afternoon.

The model village is a serious business

Start with the model village. There is one in almost every British county, usually behind a hedge, usually with a tiny church and a tiny pub and a tiny river that has been dyed blue since the 1970s. On paper it is absurd: a paying attraction made of small versions of things you can see for free outside. In practice it is one of the most honest forms of fantasy land we have. It does not ask you to believe in dragons. It asks you to believe that the world can be arranged neatly, at knee height, with no litter and no roadworks.

That is a powerful offer. The model village is not escapism in the sense of running away. It is control. It is a place where the bins are collected, the church roof is fixed and the ducks do not chase anyone. Fantasy land, at its best, is never really about leaving Britain. It is about tidying it up.

The same goes for the seaside arcade. The penny machines, the claw grabbers, the machine that tests your grip and tells you you are weaker than a child. It is a fantasy land of small stakes and bright lights. You are not going to win anything meaningful. You are going to spend four pounds and come out with a plastic monkey and a sense that the afternoon has gone well. That is a bargain.

Escape rooms and the strange comfort of a locked door

Escape rooms are the most recent addition to the family. You pay to be locked in a themed room with your friends and given a series of puzzles that would be solved in four minutes by a reasonably motivated primary school teacher. And yet they work. They work because they give you something ordinary life rarely gives you: a clear problem, a visible clock and no notifications.

For one hour, you are not a person with emails. You are a person with a padlock. That is fantasy land, but it is also a kind of relief. The escape room is a controlled emergency. Nobody is actually trapped. The stakes are low enough to be fun and high enough to make you concentrate. In a year when the news has been particularly noisy, that is not nothing.

Then there is immersive theatre, the kind where actors walk among you and you are invited to follow a storyline through a warehouse in an industrial estate. It can be brilliant. It can also be deeply awkward, especially if you are British and someone in a waistcoat asks you to dance. But the awkwardness is part of the appeal. Fantasy land is not meant to be seamless. The seams are where the fun leaks out.

Fantasy football is fantasy land with a league table

We should also talk about fantasy football, because it is fantasy land in its most British form: spreadsheets, banter, and a quiet sense that you could definitely do a better job than the manager. You pick a team of real players, invent a league with your mates, and spend nine months being furious about a defender who conceded a late corner. It is not real. It matters anyway. That is the trick of fantasy land. The emotions are real even when the world is not.

And that is probably why the phrase has become so popular. We all need a version of fantasy land. Not to avoid reality, but to take a break from its worst feature: the fact that it never stops. Fantasy land gives us a beginning, a middle and an end. It gives us a ticket, a turnstile, a score, a tiny plastic monkey. It lets us pretend, for a bit, that the world is a place with a gift shop.

The bill for a better afternoon

None of this is free. The model village charges, the arcade takes your coins, the escape room wants forty quid a head. Fantasy land is an industry. But it is also a public good. It is one of the few places left where the point is not productivity. You are not there to improve yourself. You are there to be somewhere else.

In 2026, that is worth defending. We have spent years being told that culture should be serious, that entertainment should have a message, that every hour should be optimised. Fantasy land is the opposite. It is the deliberate waste of an afternoon. It is the pleasure of a fake world built with real care. It is the model village, the arcade, the escape room, the fantasy league, the immersive show, the pier. It is the British genius for making the unreal feel like a slightly damp day out.

So no, fantasy land is not an insult. It is an invitation. Bring a coat. The tiny railway is closed for maintenance.