Author Archive

I was not very much surprised when I read this: Favorite1

Οι Βρετανοί είναι συναισθηματικοί άνθρωποι όπως και οι άλλοι λαοί. Η διαφορά μας έγκειται στο πώς εκφράζουμε τα συναισθήματά μας: με μετριοπάθεια, με ειρωνεία, μέσα από μια σειρά κώδικες. Τζόναθαν Κόου Favorite0

God is an Englishman, probably educated at Eton All good women are naturally frigid It is better to be dowdy than smart England is going to rack and ruin (The four elements of the English Creed according to E.M. Delafield) Favorite0

In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse-racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more

I consider Mike Leigh’s film Vera Drake a masterpiece. English actors I think are the best in the world and the performance of Imelda Staunton is extraordinary and suffused with humanity. Indeed, this kind of cinema with its profound sensitivity and humanity, acts as a foil to the pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, melodramatic ravings

The Mayor said: “Someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney’s marbles. Here he is plugging a film about looted Nazi art without realising that Goring himself had plans to plunder the British Museum. “And where were the Nazis going to send the Elgin marbles? To Athens! This Clooney is advocating nothing less

Britishness is a complicated and enormous thing—what different people see as meaning different things. It can mean one island, a group of islands off the coast of Europe, or it can mean the British Empire—at times it means all those things. Politicians, and the rest of us, define it in different ways

The findings from the Bible Society reveal a generation of parents who can’t tell the difference between Hollywood films and religious stories from the Old Testament. Favorite0

To summarize, Brutish (im)politeness is not an easy phenomenon to define. It is inherently an endogenous fact, an indisputable state of heart, covered by the exogenous mask of a comprehensive formality repertoire which provides catch-words for every occasion—sadly enough, since a repertoire of corresponding emotional states which might generate polite behaviour are

I was watching BBC World the other day and there was an interview with David Beckham. One of the things the lady asked him was about his tea habits (why would anybody need to know that?). — Tea with milk and sugar? — No just sugar. I know that sounds weird. To