Olympics 2012: Opening celebrates Britain's best, from Jerusalem to pop

It was loud, it was defiant; above all it was gloriously, tumultuously, spine-tinglingly British. Ninety minutes of dazzling theatre, dance, film and music; a mash-up of our cultural history delivered at breakneck speed, Danny Boyle's opening ceremony last night was everything we could have hoped for and more. It spun the head, brought a tear to the eye and made everyone lucky enough to witness it smile hard and long. Which is not something we have generally been able to say of an Olympic opening ceremony.

How different, indeed, it was to what took place in Beijing's Bird Nest stadium four years ago. Then, 2008 drummers opened up a ceremony of such scale, such extravagance, such precision it seemed to defy anyone even to attempt to follow it. After all its technical glories we feared what London might produce. Some thought that Boyle would be better off forgetting about the traditions of the form - the tableaux alluding to local historic moments, the interpretative modern dance on a theme of world peace - and instead simply do that at which Britain excels: stage a mini-Glastonbury, headlined by Tom Jones and Radiohead.

In the event he sidestepped any such alarums and came up with something innovative, witty and properly patriotic. A celebration of the best of our nation, a reminder to the world - and perhaps to ourselves - that this little island has long held within it a wellspring of joy.

When Sir Kenneth Branagh stood underneath a giant spreading oak occupying one end of the stadium (they're going to have to get the chainsaw in before Usain Bolt runs) to deliver Caliban's speech from Shakespeare's The Tempest it could have been that our greatest poet had written a review of what was to follow. "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises/ Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not/ Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments/ Will hum about mine ears"

For the next hour and a bit, sounds and sweet airs did indeed fill the stadium. From Elgar's Enigma to My Boy Lollipop, from Parry's Jerusalem to I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor, as our ears hummed with a thousand twangling instruments it was like tuning in to the entire back catalogue of Desert Island Discs. And those who arrived clinging to the cynical assumption that it would all end in tears of embarrassment were sent home with faces hurting from all that grinning.

It began with a rural idyll. As we filed into our seats, down on the athletics track was a vision of our bucolic past, complete with a gaggle of geese and several dozen well-corralled sheep. A plume of smoke emerged from the chimney of a cottage; there was a water wheel turning through a gentle torrent, wild flowers filled the meadows. It's was The Archers without the telephoned threats of violence or the vicar's daughter engaging in an affair.

Not to say that this was some sleepy past being recalled here. The Boyle village slowly turned into a frenzy of theatrical activity. As the cast members began to arrive and take up positions on the greensward, it got very, very busy down there. From a cricket match to members of the London Symphony Orchestra wandering through the fields carrying their instruments, something was always going on: something to grab the attention, something to point at, to chuckle about. It set the tone for the evening; one of constant activity.

And there was something else that was not evident in Beijing: self-deprecation. Every opening ceremony has traditionally been bedevilled by inflatables. Here, they were clouds. "Yes," the pointless cumuli smiled, "Britain is a country obsessed with its weather."

All this, incidentally, was before we had actually started. It was just to get us in the mood, to get us grinning. After a fly-past by the Red Arrows and a countdown film featuring images of numbers central to British life - the 19 bus, Number 10 Downing Street - there followed a wonderful film tracing the Thames from source to sea. There were hints in its flash-by of allusions - the clips of the Eton Boating Song and of the Sex Pistols railing against a Fascist regime - of what was to follow.

Because this was an evening in which references swished past at astonishing pace. On the big screens we saw fleeting images of great British heroes: Jonny Wilkinson kicking for World Cup glory, David Hemery leaping hurdles, Michael Fish failing to predict a hurricane. How baffling it must have been to anyone watching in downtown Pyongyang. How beguiling to anyone in Pangbourne.

Boyle, incidentally, is not a man scared of referencing others' work. He must have watched and loved Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, because, like in that play, his rural landscape was soon to be ripped asunder by the grinding engines of progress. Where meadows had been, giant chimneys emerged. Ironworks appeared. The farm labourers were replaced by grubby-faced factory workers. And what they were building soon became apparent: from the cauldron of the industrial revolution was forged the five Olympic rings, which hovered, sparking above our heads, before being lifted high up to the stadium roof. It was a breathtaking image. And it held within it the suggestion, as the chimneys disappeared to make way for a plain black rink, that in our post-industrial Britain, financial well-being will be derived from events such as the Games.

So the allusions came thick and fast. There was a sequence celebrating Boyle's own patch, the British film industry. There was a lovely moment of James Bond, including a remarkable cameo from the Queen, as herself. There was a delightful bit of coloured pixel magic, in which the entire stadium turned red white and blue. Plus there was politics. The one sequence that will have sent jitters through government involved a musical Great Ormond Street hospital. Sure, it was good to celebrate our greatest institution and say 'hands off the NHS', but all those dancing nurses and illuminated hospital beds did give an impression of a society obsessed with its own sickness.

Boyle, though, like the true showman he is, saved the best till last. His interpretation of a Saturday night in suburbia, which wrapped things up before the athletes arrived, was a work of inspired genius. To one side of the stadium, a house appeared. Then in the middle a huge inflatable version was erected, on to which were projected images of what was going on inside. And on this particular night, it was party time, a jukebox rave through of British pop's finest moments, a heady stream of twangling instruments. This was the Britain we all could relate to, the one in which the means to escape lies in our collective cultural heritage, the wonders of our isle. It ended, bang up to date, with a party advertised on Facebook, everyone back to ours for a good time. Which in this case meant some thousand over-enthusiastic dancers filling the drive of the house. And, with that, the athletes appeared in serried ranks and the Games began. But what a start it was. Sure, for viewers in Milwaukee, much of this may well have required subtitles. As a show, though, it was all the better for its refusal to compromise. Outside the stadium, the Olympics corporate message is set on ironing out local niceties, determined to homogenise us all in the supranational state of MacCokeland. But inside, for one night only, we were given an image that was resolutely Britain. Not the Britain of Coldstream Guards and Downton Abbey, perhaps. Nor the Britain of Austin Powers and Benny Hill. But the Britain of suburbia and the escapism of pop culture. The place most of us live. This is our world, it said, welcome to the isle of wonder. Boyle's bravery was to say, "never mind if outsiders didn't get half the show's many allusions, enough of us will have done". Which was fair enough. Because after all, we paid for it.