Spare me the lame attempts at humour based on national stereotypes. Even if they claim to aim for the opposite. Stephen Clarke´s
1000 Years Of Annoying The French is the kind of book that makes you weep for the insult to the trees felled to print it on.
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| A bore of a book |
I read the part on the Napoleonic Wars to see how it is dished up to a modern British audience. It includes the studied Anglo-Saxon arrogance you'd expect and duly repeats the Nelson mythology. Surprisingly, it gives Napoleon quite some credit for his civil reforms while noting his misogynist streak in law making. It even notices that Waterloo couldn't have been won without the Prussians and that there were Dutch and Germans present.
It is in fact too even handed and serious.
This light weight history of Anglo-French relations lacks the consistent wit of
1066 And All That. Had it displayed over the top jingoism at least you could have laughed at that. But adding the odd French
bon mot doesn't make up for satire.
I honestly recorded only one audible snigger.
And it had better been restricted to 200 hundred pages.
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| It was about this annoying |
Somebody please shout out and deliver me of this. Postage is on me.
I can imagine it's like another example of what Jeremy Paxman describes as the English "walking backwards into the future, with our eyes set on a time around the beginning of the 20th Century", or something like that.
ReplyDeleteWe Brits are far better at satirising ourselves... you might enjoy Kate Fox's 'Watching the English' much more... or not.
Let's say I'm not tempted ;-)
DeleteBut thanks for the suggestion. You are right that Brits have a talent for (self) satire, which is probably why I like them so much
I am surprised I have not given you a copy of "Watching the English", an excellent read. I have bought it and given it away about 4 times now. The authoress is a trained anthropologist who experiments on the English. She is English herself, but lived in France for a long time. For example she deliberately pushes to the front of queues to see what reaction she gets. A wonderful little book.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 1,000 years of annoying the French... I am surprised, it should have been a lot more jingoistic, maybe he should have written the UKIP version of English history, now that has legs! I suppose the thing about "1066 and All That" is that it was satirising the jingoistic way history was taught to us in the days of Whig history. When everything was judged good or bad according to how it assisted us to that apex of civilisation - parliamentary democracy.
she obviously has got her empirical heart in the right place!
DeleteRight on in regards to the UKIP version of history. Why don't you write one while traveling? Should be hilarious. Just make sure it's lesse than 200 pages.
Trouble is... I've been so effective in writing this into teh ground that nobody will take it off me. That means I will have to burn the book, you understand that? I will actually have to do a book burning!
ReplyDeleteI hope that moustache is photoshopped. This is unbecoming to the national stereotype.
ReplyDeleteLOL
Deletethat moustache was a post holidays lark. I had a beard but was too lazy to shave it all off. It was key conversation material for my colleagues for a week. 'komkommertijd' ;-)