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To mark the end of the first decade of the century, the Magazine has been asking readers to tell the story of the past 10 years, based on five themes. Here are our top 100 things that define the Noughties. Is it really possible to sum up a decade? WHAT IS 'PORTRAIT OF THE DECADE' ALL ABOUT? We asked readers to help us to create a portrait of the decade people , news stories , Each day last week we focused on a different theme - words objects and culture An expert picked 20 of each

Portrait of the Decade guidelines With the help of thousands of readers, maybe it is. Last week, we asked readers to send in their suggestions for the words, people, events, objects and cultural highlights which they thought defined the Noughties. Our panel of five independent experts considered all the suggestions and each has drawn up a list of 20. The results below give a snapshot of who and what has shaped the last 10 years. Technology, celebrity culture and environmentalism are dominant themes. There's also a downloadable poster - a portrait of the decade - depicting all 100 things, by illustrator Chris Bianchi. You can download the PDF at the top of this page. You can see how the website's international audience told their story of the decade here .

The final 20



9/11

24/7

Bling

Blog

Credit crunch

Chav

Facebooking

Fairtrade

Footprint

i-

lol

Meh

Obamamania

Pandemic

Slumdog

Sustainability

Truthiness

Tweet

WAG

War on terror

Lexicographer Susie Dent



"This is not really about individual words and phrases, but much more about their resonances. War on Terror and 9/11 are packed full of associations that are still ringing loudly today. Bling and WAG neatly convey our love/hate relationship with the celebrities who have dominated both the real world and the virtual one. And the importance of the latter in the Noughties was huge, as the choices of i, blog, and tweet testify. Even chav owed its new (sour) breath of life to a website, from which it was propelled into the limelight like no other word this century."







The final 20



David Beckham

L/Corp Johnson Beharry

Osama Bin Laden

Tony Blair

George W Bush

Shami Chakrabarti

Simon Cowell

Roger Federer

Norman Foster

Stephen Fry

Bill Gates

Jade Goody

Brian Haw

Rupert Murdoch

Barack Obama

Jamie Oliver

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

David Tennant

Jane Tomlinson

Jimmy Wales



Team from Who's Who



"Most of the people we thought would come up did indeed appear. Technology has been a huge revelation of this decade and that's why Page and Brin, Wales and Gates are there. And whether you like her or not, Goody had a huge impact on the media and on ordinary people. Fry has raised his profile considerably through his influential tweeting. It was interesting that readers wanted members of the British Armed Forces to be honoured - we think that L/Cpl Beharry has come to embody that valour demonstrated by UK soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan."









The final 20



Danish cartoons controversy

Death of Dr David Kelly

Death of Michael Jackson

Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

England win the Ashes 2005

Final Harry Potter book

Fuel strikes 2000

Human Genome Project

Indian Ocean tsunami

Iraq War

John Darwin, missing canoeist

Launch of Big Brother

Launch of Wikipedia

London bombings 2005

MPs' expenses scandal

Northern Ireland power-sharing

Run on Northern Rock

September 11th 2001

Smoking ban

Usain Bolt at Beijing Olympics



Author Tim Footman



"I was surprised by a few omissions, the Large Hadron Collider, for example. But these 20 stories offer a pretty good snapshot of what occupied our minds in Britain in the past 10 years, and remind us of some events we may have forgotten. Some of these stories are potent because of what they represent: the Northern Rock crisis was a local response to global financial troubles; the Danish cartoons provoked questions about culture, religion, integration and free speech; the death of Dr Kelly opened up all sorts of conspiracy theories, as well as acting as a focus for discontent with the Iraq war. And some events - like the missing canoeist - have no real subtext. It's the stories themselves that matter."







The final 20



Bag for life

BlackBerry

Bling jewellery

Bluetooth earpiece

Credit card

Flat-screen TVs

Gherkin (London's Swiss Re building)

Hair straighteners

High-visibility vest

Hoody

iPod

Organic vegetable box

Oystercard

Playstation3

Sat-nav

Sky+ box

Toyota Prius

Ugg boots

Wheelie bin

Wind turbine



Author Peter York



"There were lots of 'boys' toys' suggested, but I've tried to make a choice broader than technology. It's good to see flat-screen televisions in there, they really took over the living rooms. Hair straighteners revolutionised women's hair and popularised the Atomic Kitten look, while the Toyota Prius symbolises the way people started making environmental gestures. Everyone was talking about hoodies for a while, because of David Cameron's [hug a hoody] comments and the fear of young criminals. I chose Sky+ because it changed my life and the way I view television."











The final 20





Black Watch (play)

Box sets

Curb your Enthusiasm

Live opera beamed into cinemas

Liverpool as European Capital Of Culture

Lord of the Rings trilogy

From Dome to O2 Arena

Rise of music festivals

Return of Doctor Who

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra at the Proms

Spotify

St Pancras station reopening

Strictly Come Dancing

Sultan's Elephant

Television on-demand

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The Office

The Thick of It

The Wire

YouTube





Jasper Rees, editor of The Arts Desk



"My choices reflect a yearning for control and escape in an increasingly uncertain world. A decade defined by polarised attitudes to religion was most passionately explored in Black Watch, a play about Scottish soldiers in Iraq, and Richard Dawkins's polemic disproving God's existence. On screen, drama fed a hankering for fantasy in Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings, and the can-do wish-fulfilment of the talent show. Big thinking in the Noughties produced great buildings, huge festivals, staggering public art and big ideas, none more moving than a Latin American youth orchestra which opened eyes and ears. But the biggest idea was the new freedom to create your own cultural environment, through downloading, streaming and posting."









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