Abroad

Understanding America. — Americans are very concerned about their country’s image abroad, but they need not worry. We all know perfectly well what America is like, and follow their national pass-times on television. Most people spend most of their time punching each other in the face, shooting each other and chasing each other in cars, one of which usually drives over a bridge or a cliff. Then they chase each other to the top of buildings until one of them falls off. Nothing can shock us and we still love Americans, for all the jokes we make about them from time to time. Many of us are simply jealous.
(Daily Telegraph 13/1/96)

American suntan. — Americans, for some reason, cultivate the ‘brown look’, exposing themselves to artificial radiation for hours on end. I imagine it is something to do with guilty feelings about the red Indians, whose hunting grounds they appropriated, and the blacks, whom they imported as slaves. The idea is that if they sit in front of an ultra-violet lamp long enough, they will all end up the same colour and nobody will mind.
(Daily Telegraph 1/4/91)

American efficiency. — If a 33-year-old builder can be killed instantly on a metal lavatory made ‘live’ because of a broken light fitting, why do the Americans, when they wish to electrocute each other, require an infernal contraption using tens of thousands of volts which causes the eyes to pop out, the blood to boil, and takes 20 minutes to kill the victim? We should think of that little electric lavatory seat every time we hear an American call for air strikes in the Bosnian civil war.
(Daily Telegraph 15/7/95)

Euro-Disney. — It is no accident that the central boulevard in Europe’s Disneyland, to be opened outside Paris on April 12, is called Main Street USA. The whole enterprise is a celebration of the victory of American mass culture over the educated, humane liberal civilizations of Europe. My heart bleeds for the younger generation in France. If Mickey Mouse were human, they might be able to convert him to the superiority of the French culture, to produce a Gallic Mickey from all the mess of sentimentality, self-deception and inaccuracy of observation which the Americans have put into his invention. But of course Mickey isn’t human at all, even less than Tammy Wynette or Jimmy Carter. Let us hope that in this splendid recession — long may it last — the whole enterprise will flop, and Mickey Mouse will have to go back to Florida with his dear little tail between his cute little legs.
(Daily Telegraph 9/3/92)

Aborigines. — In 50,000 years of roaming the great Australian plains, aboriginal society left no history, no records, no buildings or monuments of any description — nothing beyond a vague memory of having used some spots for the purpose of dreaming, and a few painted daubs of a standard which would have been thought unacceptable — before the invention of the ‘modern art’ market — in an English child of four.
(Daily Telegraph 2/12/91)

The Swedes. — The Swedes are so far removed from original sin that they no longer notice if they are clothed or not.
(Daily Telegraph 2/9/92)

French garbage disposal. — The countryside has an entirely different meaning for French people — partly, I expect, because there is so much more of it in France. Rather than something to be sighed over and preserved, it is a boring obstacle to be covered at maximum speed between huge meals. Obviously, French eating habits create stupendous problems of garbage disposal — and the only answer is to dump it all in the countryside.
On our journey south we passed many, many signs warning us about the dangers of alcohol, but none urging us to keep France tidy. However, my dear wife, who was brought up near Guildford in Surrey and has good suburban instincts, was determined to keep France tidy whether they like it or not. The remains of every picnic were preserved in the car like sacred relics — rancid butter, stinking cheese, rotten peaches, stale bread and sad, bad pieces of pâté — until we might find a litter-bin. Needless to say, there was not a single bin to be found between Le Havre and Chenonceaux, 200 miles to the south. Chenonceaux, whose beautiful Italianate château designed by Trinqueaux in 1513 spans the River Cher on five magnificent arches, is now entirely devoted to tourists. Litter-bins are provided as an additional tourist attraction, catering especially for the strange tastes of visiting English. When we arrived in a swarm of flies and bringing a terrible smell with us, we filled three litter-bins with what we had saved, watched sourly by an old gardener. No doubt it was his job to empty the little bins and spread the rubbish over the countryside where it belonged.
(Country Topics pg 127)

Comparative bureaucracy. — In contrast to the British bureaucracy, which administers draconian and intolerable laws with a quiet efficiency and common sense, the French bureaucracy administers equally unpleasant laws with a ferocity that is only slightly mitigated by its inefficiency.
(Country Topics pg 19)

Swedish solution. — I begin to have the feeling that the time has come for another war. We have done the Germans and Japanese, but Swedes are particularly annoying people. They have no body hair and never stop grumbling about all the acid rain and atmospheric pollution we send them. Their behaviour in the last war was not distinguished, and now they have started a fashion for arresting any of their citizens guilty of sexual impropriety abroad. There are obvious attractions in the idea of a short sharp war with Sweden. After it, the Swedes will be required to apologise, pay compensation and put abstract sculptures on the theme of Reconciliation in all their public places.
(Daily Telegraph 3/4/95)

The Russians. — The Russian character can be seen to vary only between subhuman stupidity and low cunning, between exaggerated exhibitionist idealism and total cruelty, between the bullies and the bullied. In the whole bloodstained history of this accursed nation the periods of respite from deliberately inflated suffering do not add up to more than a few decades. The most sensible attitude for us to take toward the Russian people is not admiration for their suffering, but contempt that they have been prepared to put up with it for so long: horror that after sixty years they do not dare speak to each other, for fear of being over-heard by the secret police; and hatred that their cowardice allows them to go on inflicting this cruelty on each other, generation after generation. After those emotions, there may be room for a little pity. (The Spectator 26/8/78)

The Greeks. — The modern inhabitants of the Peloponnese bear no relation at all to the Athenians of Pericles’ time. If Mr Norman St John-Stevas , Mr Taki Theodoracopulos and Miss Christina Onassis took their clothes off and stood beside the Elgin Marbles, we would see immediately from their short, hairy legs and low-slung bottoms that they are an entirely different race — descended from Bulgars, Turks, Macedonians, Albanians and possibly also from those small, almost tailless black mountain goats one sees in Montenegro. They are no more Greek than Mrs Thatcher. (The Spectator 8/1/83)

Anglo-American problems. — The sad truth is that although we and Americans talk the same language, our attitudes to life are so different that we can scarcely communicate with each other. (The Daily Telegraph 12/7/95)