Back to Blog
Comyns‘s wit doesn’t promote the blessings of being English, but the blessings of being able to laugh about being English. Not many reasons to be cheerful in 1954.īut such conditions are soil for the growth of English wit, dry as both the soil and the wit may be. The Mau Mau were rising up, Suez was preparing to boil over, the IRA started acting bolshy in Armagh, and Alan Turing poisoned himself rather than go to prison for homosexuality. Sociologically the pre-war world of fixed class, unchallenged privilege, and institutional isolation was gone. The Second World War had depleted the resources of the the average household as well as those of the Treasury. There isn’t likely to be progress but that’s never been a reason for despair.Ĭomyns wrote when the British Empire, really the English running of it, was disintegrating. In fact life going on means that there will be any number of replacement problems once this one is resolved. Recently this has been shown clearly in the process of leaving the European Union. The saving grace of the English is that they don’t take tragedy all that seriously.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |