from the How to Be British Postcards @ LGP, Brighton, UK www.lgpcards.com
7
Being British
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CLOSE-UP
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1. How they see one another
1. Read the text opposite and find
the English equivalents of (in the
right order): parmi – respectueux
des lois – courageux –
inébranlable – juste –
s’enorgueillir – qui s’autodénigre –
solidité – compact – justesse –
brouillard – la Manche.
2. What image of the English, the
Scots, the Welsh and the Irish is
given in these documents?
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10
15
20
Believing themselves superior to all other nations, they are also
convinced that all other nations secretly know that they are. In a
perfect world, the English suspect everyone would be more like
them.
Geography reinforces this belief as the inhabitants look out to
the sea all around them from the fastness of their “tight little
island”. Nobody would ever question the aptness of the newspaper headline: “Fog in the Channel – Continent cut off.”
Antony MIALL and David MILSTED, Xenophobe’s Guide to the English (1993)
© Rupert Besley
“How much do you charge
to go to the station?” Sandy
McGregor asked the taxi driver.
“A pound,” replied the driver.
“And how much do you
charge for my bag?”
“There is no charge for the
luggage.”
“All right. Take my bag. I’ll
walk,” said Sandy.
espite having the second
largest prison population in Western Europe, the
English insist that they are
amongst the most, if not the
most, civilised nations in the
world. Civilised not so much
in terms of culture, perhaps,
as in social behaviour. They
consider themselves to be law
abiding, courteous, tolerant,
decent, generous, gallant, steadfast and fair. They also take pride
in their self-deprecatory sense of humour, which they see as the
ultimate proof of their good nature.
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Being Irish means…
• you will be punched for
no good reason
• much of your food was
boiled
• you spent a good portion
of your childhood kneeling
• you’re strangely poetic
after a few beers
• you’re poetic a lot
• you don’t know the words
but that doesn’t stop you
from singing
• you can’t wait for the
other guy to stop talking so
you can start talking
• you are genetically incapable of keeping a secret
Joe KEEFE, Being Irish…
Contemplations on the Nature and
Meaning of the Irish Race (2002)
CLOSE-UP OF CIVILISATION
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2. How to be polite
1. Guess the origin of the
document.
2. Describe and compare the two
scenes.
3. What is the cartoonist’s goal?
3. A stiff upper lip
from the How to Be British Postcards @ LGP, Brighton, UK www.lgpcards.com
1. Read the text and find the English equivalents
of (in the right order): faire face à – enjoué –
raideur – mélancolie – épuisant – jovial – faire
preuve de – discret.
2. With the help of the text, choose the French word
that best corresponds to the expression “stiff upper
lip”: ironie – orgueil – humour – dérision – flegme –
mélancolie.
toicism, the capacity to greet life’s vicissitudes
question “How was the journey?”, with a breezy “Not
with cheerful calm, is an essential ingredient of
so bad, thanks.”
Englishness. It is not the sort of unfeeling woodenThe English, who suspect that all foreigners tend to
ness implied by the expression “stiff upper lip”, nor is
overreact and “make a meal of things”, will warm to
5 it oriental fatalism, or Scandinavian gloom.
15 you instantly if you display understated good humour
It is the extraordinary quality of mind that enables
in the face of adversity. A typical English stoic is the
English people to spend long, wearying hours
circus worker who had his arm bitten off by a tiger.
making their way to and from work on a transport
When admitted to hospital and asked if he was allersystem that many Third-World nations would be
gic to anything, he replied, “Only tigers.”
10 ashamed of and, having arrived, respond to the
A. MIALL and D. MILSTED, Xenophobe’s Guide to the English (1993)
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4. Minding your own business
he English believe in minding their own business.
Few nations understand how deeply ingrained1
this belief is.
The queue is one of the few places where the
5 English allow themselves to talk to each other without
having been formally introduced. The others are
when taking the dog for a walk, or any serious
catastrophe, like an accident. However it needs to be
firmly understood that any friendships made in such
10 circumstances must remain2 outside with the dogs, or
T
stop when rescue arrives. Being trapped3 with an
English person in, say, a train in a tunnel, might result
in community singing, even the exchange of
confidences, but it is not an invitation to a more
15 permanent intimacy. When, after such an experience,
English people say “We really must meet again”, you
are not meant to believe them.
A. MIALL and D. MILSTED, Xenophobe’s Guide to the English (1993)
1. ancré – 2. rester – 3. bloqué
1. Under what circumstances do the English
talk to strangers?
5. Talking point
2. What do the pronouns we, you and them
refer to in the last sentence?
If you had to draw a portrait of the French, what would you
say?
3. What is the goal of the final remark?
CLOSE-UP 7 – BEI NG BRITI SH
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6. Oh! To be in England
like living in England because everywhere else is
foreign and strange. The only language I speak is
English: I dropped1 French at school and took up
hurdling2 with the athletic team instead. Even now,
in later years, my instinctive reaction on hearing
French is to jerk one leg in the air and propel myself3
towards low garden walls. But I wouldn’t like anyone to think I don’t like Abroad. I do. Abroad
means adventure and the possibility of danger and
delicious food, but Abroad is also tiring and
confusing and full of foreigners who tell you that the
bank is open when it’s not.
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1. With the help of the
documents given on p. 26
and 27, list the reasons
why the narrator is so
fond of England.
2. Give a few examples of
the narrator’s sense of
humour in the text.
Being an atheist I am naturally interested in
English churches, and being a town dweller I passionately love the English countryside. Though I will concede that “it
looks better on the telly than it does in real life”, as a child new to the
countryside said to me once on a Social Service outing.
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I like English weather; like the countryside it’s constantly drawing attention to itself. I started this article in a room filled with piercing sunlight,
but now a strong wind has materialised and the room is full of gloom4.
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I like the reserve of English people, because I don’t particularly want to
talk to strangers in trains either, unless of course there is a crisis such as a
“cow on the line” causing an hour’s delay. In which case my fellow passengers and I will happily spill out5 our life stories to anybody we can get
to listen.
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I like the way in which the English cope with disasters: cut our water off
and we will cheerfully queue at a stand pipe in the snow. Throw us into ratinfested foreign jails and we will emerge blinking in the daylight to claim
that our brutal-looking jailers were “decent sorts who treated us well”. I bet
somewhere, pinned onto a filthy prison wall, is a Christmas card: “To my
friend and captor, Pedro, from Jim Wilkinson of cell 14.”
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I’m happy to live in a country that produces important things: wonderful plays, books, literature, heart surgeons, gardeners and Private Eye7.
I was asked to write about why I like England in 700 words. Now if I’d
been asked to write about why I don’t like England I’d have needed
1,000, and I suspect it would have been easier to write. It’s our birthright
and privilege to criticise our own country and shout for revolution. I
asked a friend of mine where, given the choice and enough money, he
would choose to live. He replied gloomily, “There isn’t anywhere else.”
Given the choice between death and exile I’d choose exile every time,
but I’d be very, very unhappy at having to leave the club.
Sue TOWNSEND, True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole,
Margaret Hilda Roberts and Susan Lilian Townsend (1989)
1. abandonner – 2. course de haies – 3. se jeter – 4. obscurité – 5. déverser –
6. faire face à – 7. détective (magazine satirique)
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