The UK certainly had a wealth of programming talent though: Jeff Minter, Andrew Braybrook, Nick Jones, Chris Butler, John Twiddy, Zac Townsend, Dave Collier, John Rowlands, Jon Hare, Stephen Ruddy, Geoff Crammond, Archer Maclean, Paul Woakes, Nick Gollop, Dan Phillips, Stan Schembri, Steve Snake, Andy Walker, Peter Baron, Dave Thomas, Jon Ritman. And that's a quick think on matters...
Just because some of their output isn't as well known as that produced by the people Tom mentioned, doesn't mean it wasn't good. Mind you, I'm only going through my brain for C64 guys here cos that's the machine I know best