How to be a Brit by George Mikes Read Free Book Online Page B

STANDARD
    (Londoner’s Diary)
    The most interesting
feature of the Charamak raid is the fact that Reggie Tilbury is the fifth son
of the Earl of Bayswater. He was an Oxford Blue, a first-class cricketer and
quite good at polo. When I talked to his wife (Lady Clarisse, the daughter of
Lord Elasson) at Claridges today, she wore a black suit and a tiny black hat
with a yellow feather in it. She said: ‘Reggie was always very much interested
in warfare.’ Later she remarked : ‘It was clever of him, wasn’t it?’
     
    You may .write a letter to
the Editor of The Times :
    Sir, — In connection with
the Charamak raid I should like to mention as a matter of considerable interest
that it was in that little Pacific Island that the distinguished English poet,
John Flat, wrote his famous poem ‘The Cod’ in 1693. Yours, etc....

     
    You may read this answer on
the following day.
     
    Sir, — I am very grateful
to Mr... for calling attention to John Flat’s poem ‘The Cod.’ May I be allowed
to use this opportunity, however, to correct a widespread and in my view very
unfortunate error which the great masses of the British people seem to share
with your correspondent. The Cod,’ although John Flat started writing it in
1693, was only finished in the early days of January 1694.
    Yours, etc....
     
    If you are the London
correspondent of the American paper
    THE OKLAHOMA SUN
    simply cable this:
     
    ‘Yanks Conquer Pacific
Ocean.’

IF NATURALIZED
     
    The
verb to
naturalize clearly proves what the British think of you. Before you are
admitted to British citizenship you are not even considered a natural human
being. I looked up the word natural (na’tural) in the Pocket Oxford Dictionary
(p. 251); it says: Of or according to or provided by nature, physically
existing, innate, instinctive, normal, not miraculous or spiritual or
artificial or conventional.... Note that before you obtain British citizenship,
they simply doubt that you are provided by nature.
    According to the Pocket
Oxford Dictionary the word ‘natural’ has a second meaning, too: Half-witted
person. This second meaning, however, is irrelevant from the point of view of
our present argument.

    If you are tired of not
being provided by nature, not being physically existing and being miraculous
and conventional at the same time, apply for British citizenship. Roughly
speaking, there are two possibilities: it will be granted to you, or not.
    In the first case you must
recognize and revise your attitude to life. You must pretend that you are
everything you are not and you must look down upon everything you are.
    Copy the attitude of an
English acquaintance of mine — let us call him Gregory Baker. He, an English
solicitor, feels particularly deep contempt for the following classes of
people: foreigners, Americans, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen,
Jews, workers, clerks, poor people, non-professional men, business men, actors,
journalists and literary men, women, solicitors who do not practise in his
immediate neighbourhood, solicitors who are hard up and solicitors who are too
rich, Socialists, Liberals, Tory-reformers (Communists are not worthy even of
his contempt); he looks down upon his mother, because she has a business mind,
his wife, because she comes from a non-professional county family, his brother,
because although he is a professional officer he does not serve with the
Guards, Hussars, or at least with a county regiment. He adores and admires his
seven-years old son, because the shape of his nose resembles his own.
    If naturalized, remember
these rules:
     
    1. You must start eating
porridge for breakfast and allege that you like it.
    2. Speak English with your
former compatriots. Deny that you know any foreign language (including your
mother tongue). The knowledge of foreign languages is very un-English. A little
French is permissible, but only with an atrocious accent.
    3. Revise your library. Get
rid of all foreign writers whether in the