London ( CNN ) -- Hundreds of millions around the world have been dazzled by the sights and sounds of director Danny Boyle 's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games . The four-hour , Â£27 million ( $ 42.4 million ) spectacle contained references to such globally-recognized British icons such as James Bond , David Bowie and Harry Potter 's Lord Voldemort . But with the production tossing out historical and cultural references at a rapid rate , even the most ardent Anglophiles in the audience may have felt some allusions whiz over their head like an airborne nanny . The Oscar-winning director of `` Slumdog Millionaire '' says the ceremony , titled `` Isles of Wonder , '' was inspired by a passage in Shakespeare 's The Tempest , believed to have been written in 1610 and set on a remote , magical island . Although that phrase itself appears nowhere in the play , the character Caliban refers to his home as an isle `` full of noises , sounds and sweet airs , that give delight and hurt not . '' The line encapsulates the vision fellow film director Stephen Daldry , the ceremony 's creative director , says the production sought to represent , in capturing `` the rich heritage , diversity , energy , inventiveness , wit and creativity that truly defines the British Isles . '' The ceremony opened with a scene inspired by the work of another English literary genius , the Romantic visionary poet and painter William Blake : Specifically , the preface to his epic `` Milton a Poem '' -- `` And did those feet in ancient time , '' better known as `` Jerusalem . '' Written in 1804 , the poem was set to music in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry , and sung to bolster flagging spirits during the war years . With its lyric describing the establishment of a new Jerusalem in England , it has become England 's most recognized patriotic song , sung as a religious hymn and a de facto national anthem at many sporting events . No less than three phrases from its 16 lines -- `` green & pleasant land , '' `` dark satanic mills '' and a `` chariot of fire '' -- have entered the national lexicon , and were referenced within the ceremony . The first provided the theme for the opening scene , which presented a vision of England as a pre-industrial rural idyll -- the type of bucolic setting in which J. R. R. Tolkien 's Hobbits made their home . Animals gambolled , workers tended the fields while a game of cricket took place on a village green , complete with a maypole -- a traditional focal point for community celebrations in British village life . In one area of the stadium was a mound resembling Glastonbury Tor , an historically significant hill in Somerset identified with King Arthur . The hill carries a link to the Jerusalem theme , as Blake 's poem is inspired by the `` Glastonbury Legend '' -- an apocryphal story that one of Jesus ' relatives , Joseph of Arimathea , had visited Glastonbury and taken Jesus there as a boy . Glastonbury also has a more contemporary significance as the home of the UK 's most famous music festival . Enter the `` dark satanic mills '' of the industrial revolution , which began in the UK in the middle of the 18th century and swept throughout the rest of the world , transforming society and laying the foundations of the modern world in its wake . Featured in the ceremony were representations of looms for manufacturing textiles and iron-making processes which played a key role in the revolution . The next , dreamlike sequence celebrated one of Britain 's most beloved institutions , the National Health Service , while playing on its link to another celebrated icon . Founded in 1948 , the NHS provides free healthcare , and has become the fifth largest employer in the world , with 1.7 million staff . Many Britons are fiercely proud of the service and have fought to defend it from successive waves of reforms . The NHS was represented here by several wards ' worth of nurses pushing hospital beds , which were used as trampolines by children before being arranged to spell out the word : `` Gosh . '' Coming in close proximity to a recitation from J.M . Barrie 's children 's classic Peter Pan -- `` When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth , it is not in the least alarming , but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real '' -- this was a clear reference to Great Ormond Street Hospital , a London children 's hospital closely associated with that book . In 1929 , Barrie gifted all the rights from the work to the hospital , claiming that Peter Pan himself had been a patient there , and that `` it was he who put me up to the little thing I did for the hospital . '' Peter Pan was not the only children 's literary character to feature in the segment , as a shower of Mary Poppinses -- the magical English nanny who was the heroine of P. L. Travers ' book series -- blew in from above , to do battle with a towering character who resembled Lord Voldemort , the main villain of J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter books ( Rowling herself also appeared in the ceremony ) . The heroes did n't all hail from the world of books . At one point a Mini appeared -- the classic two-door economy car first manufactured by the British Motor Corporation in 1959 . The next narrative segment was more modern and raucous , featuring a house party crashed by a horde of social networking teens . The attention also shifted to Britain 's rich lineage of musical stars : Queen , David Bowie , the Sex Pistols , New Order and the Eurythmics , among many others . The ceremony also made great play of the two great , inescapable constants of British life -- the weather , and the dry national humor . At one point in the proceedings , as a `` storm cloud '' broke and threatened to jeopardize the celebrations on stage , an audio clip familiar to many Britons was played . It contained the immortal words of veteran television weatherman Michael Fish , best remembered for allegedly saying , hours before a killer 1987 storm : `` Apparently a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way . Well , do n't worry , if you 're watching , there is n't . '' In recent years , Fish has been at pains to point out that the British public has misremembered his role in the affair , saying he was n't working that day and that his infamous quote was actually made in relation to another storm . On any other day , he might resent the matter being revisited . But tonight he will surely manage a laugh at the unlikely way the bane of his career has placed him at center stage , in celebrated company , at Britain 's biggest party .
Danny Boyle 's Olympic opening teemed with historic , literary and pop culture references . Its title , 'Isles of Wonder , ' was inspired by a line in Shakespeare 's `` The Tempest '' It contained many references to the celebrated William Blake poem `` Jerusalem '' But it 's not all highbrow : there were also some very funny lines from Monty Python ( who had been filming at the same time ) that made their way into the film as well.