It was revealing as a piece of history too, with potential MP's answering questions by thanking the questioner and saying nothing, demonstrating this is not a failing just of contemporary politicians. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. OK - it pokes fun at the English from a Scottish point of view which ought to be edifying for those of us on this side of the pond. G. MacDonell’s England, their England', in Gerard Carruthers, and Colin Kidd (eds), Literature and Union: Scottish Texts, British Contexts ( Oxford, 2018; online edn, Oxford Academic , 18 Jan. I went to a school founded 5 years before I started there, so by the time I left I had witnessed half its history to that point, and the country I was born in was only founded in 1840, so it's hard to imagine what it would be like to go to a school with such a depth of history.

In 1914 a man comes down to the green here, and he makes a speech about just that very national honour that you've been talking about. The book, he is told, is to be about the English, their social life and their related institutions, and written in such a way as to be enlightening for foreigners. I was left with the impression that Donald thinks that the English are kind largely because he is kind. Those whose lives are occupied in combatting the eccentricities of God regard as very small beer the eccentricities of Man.

Book Is In Very Good Condition For Age Spine Worn At Top And Tail, Board Corners Bumped, Slipcase Partially Sunned Binding Tight And Secure Pages Clean And Bright Throughout.

I can’t say this book gives a good idea of the “real” England but more, a picture of England as a “type”: the cricketers, the fox-hunters, the footballers, the rugby-players in mud and cold rain, the diplomats, the country “gaffers”, the city slickers, the parliamentarians, the factory-hands, the Yorkshiremen who are good at engineering, the land-owners, the village dwellers. I was reminded of Wodehouse's Psmith in the City, where the viewpoint character visits Wodehouse's old school (which is not the character's old school).And it was a striking testimony to the mathematical and ballistical skill of the professor that the ball landed with a sharp report upon the top of his head. Chapters on cricket, the Geneva of the League of Nations, fox-hunting, golf, country-house parties, politics and so on are described by appealing young Scottish war veteran Donald Cameron.

Fun Folio Society edition of MacDonell's gently comic novel depicting England (and village cricket) between the wars.If the book has a fault, it's that it's very much about its own time (which is also a strength, if you're interested in getting an insight into that time), and a lot of the contemporary references have lost their resonance in almost a century. It closes with a sentimental chapter set at Winchester, where the author (but not his character) went to school, in which one of the boys (or "men," as they're known at Winchester; this particular man is about 12 years old) explains that a piece of terminology used at the school is based on something that used to happen "until quite recently," and when pressed clarifies that by this he means 70 or 80 years ago. A very enjoyable experience that allows the reader to escape this angry, money hungry world for a little flight to a peaceful time and place. The very gentlest of satire - in fact it's really just a fawning, book-length love letter to the English. Finally, the Kindle edition I had had all manner of typos and odd grammar in the intro, which nearly put me off reading the whole thing.

The scenes include a country house weekend, a visit to the theatre, cricket and rugby matches, a voyage to Danzig, the village pub, political meetings (". To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre—mown, rolled, watered—a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket. Banished from his native Scotland by a curious clause in his father’s will, Donald Cameron moves to London and decides to conduct a study of the English people; a strange race who, he is told, have built an entire national identity around a reverence for team spirit and the memory of Lord Nelson . Set in 1920s England, the book takes the form of a travel memoir by a young Scotsman who has been invalided away from the Western Front, "Donald Cameron", whose father's will forces him to reside in England.But very, very much 'of its time' (quite entertainingly racist at points), dated and just, well, tiresome. One of a genre at the time, the novel examines the changing nature of English society during the interwar period. Reprint Society edition hardback; good, lightly aged to page edges, name on fep dated 1941; no dj; UK dealer, immediate dispatch. He experiences a few of the essential traits of being English as he progresses from Fox hunts, to weekend parties, to gatherings in pubs and other typical English ritualistic behavior ; all done with good humor and jolly spirit.