Scorn by Matthew; Parris Read Free Book Online Page A

ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours.
William Ralph Inge, The Perpetual Pessimist
    If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, ‘What I Believe’
    Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
    When Dr Johnson described patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel, he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word Reform.
US Senator Roscoe Conkling

 
    Places
    I come from Des Moines, Iowa. Somebody had to.
The opening line to Bill Bryson’s first book
    I’m out of here, I’m better than all of you.
Tracey Emin on her home town of Margate
    You gotta live somewhere.
Jimmy Brogan, a suggested motto for Cleveland, USA
    Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn’t fit for humans now.
… Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
John Betjeman, Continual Dew, ‘Slough’
    I see you come from Slough. You can go back there. It is a terrible place.
Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, to a prisoner acquitted of rape
    Erith isn’t twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham.
Linda Smith
    In 1956 the population of Los Angeles was 2,243,901. By 1970 it had risen to 2,811,801, 1,650,917 of whom are currently up for a series.
Fran Lebowitz on Los Angeles
    The difference between yoghurt and Los Angeles is that yoghurt has a living culture.
Sean Penn
    She’s blended right in – not necessarily a compliment around here.
A member of the public after seeing Gwyneth Paltrow in London’s Kilburn High Road
    Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
Bill Vaughan
    Can pigs grow wings and fly, unwonton birds?
Can the salt sea grow black with grazing herds?
Can the lean thistle blossom into figs?
Or Oxford aught produce save fools and prigs?
Geoffrey Howard on Oxford
    Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
Matthew Arnold on Oxford
    So this is Winnipeg. I can tell it’s not Paris.
Bob Edwards on Winnipeg
    From 20,000 feet in the air, on the way to Paris.
Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, asked the best way to see Darwin, Northern Territory
    One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
Jane Austen, Emma
    When a man is tired of Birmingham he is entirely right.
Hannah Betts
    Getting drunk is the quickest way out of it.
Anonymous High Court Judge on Manchester
    Manchester is, in the main, dull and workmanlike, the majority of its people live between the workshop, the racing columns of the newspapers, the organized banality of the music hall and the mean street.
D.L. Kelleher, The Glamour of Manchester, 1920
    He chose to live in Manchester, a wholly incomprehensible choice for a free man to make.
Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, of a man in a divorce case
    Not such a nice place.
Queen Elizabeth II on Manchester, during a visit to St Petersburg, 1994
    The best thing that comes out of Yorkshire is the road to Lancashire.
Dame Thora Hird
    Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you without asking. If he does not, why humiliate him?
Sydney Smith
    They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society.
Editorial in the Spectator . The editor, Boris Johnson, took responsibility. It was alleged that the journalist Simon Heffer was involved in drafting the column.
    Here we are, in one of the most depressed towns in SouthernEngland, a place that is arguably