On not knowing anything

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>>74183667

Our hostess replied chattily: "I'm afraid I have no idea. No good asking me, my dear." She looked at one of her guests: "I think Evelyn might...'

Evelyn was born and brought up in Tanganyika but she shook her head firmly: "I can't remember at the moment. Perhaps Sir Robert..."
Sir Robert was British Resident in Zanzibar, the place in question, for 27 years but he, too, shook his head with grim determination: "It escapes me too. These peculiar African names... I know it is called something or other. It may come back to me presently."
Mr. Trevor, the original enquirer, was growing irritated. "The wretched place is quite near Dar Es Salaam. It's called... Wait a minute..."
I saw the name on the tip on his tongue. I tried to be helpful: "Isn't it called Zan..."

tl;dr

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>>74183745

One or two murderous glances made me shut up. I meant to put it in question form only but as that would have involved uttering the name sought for, it would not do. The word stuck in my throat. I went on in the same pensive tone: "I mean... What I meant was, isn't it Czechoslovakia?"

The vice-president of one of our geographical societies shook his head sadly. "I don't think so... I can't be sure of course... But I shouldn't think so."
Mr. Trevor was almost desperate. "Just south of the equator. It sounds something like..." But he could not produce the word.

>>74183667
>>74183745
>>74183842
Sadly this is all true

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>>74183842

Then a benevolent looking elderly gentleman, with a white goatee beard smiled pleasantly at Trevor and told him in a confident, guttural voice: "Ziss islant iss kolt Zsantsibar, yes?"

There was a deadly, hostile silence in the room. Then a retired colonel on my left leaned forward and whispered into my ear: "Once a German, always a German." The bishop on my right nodded grimly: "And they're surprised if we're prejudiced against them."

wtf am I reading ?

>>74183988
The memoirs of a Hungarian who had to emigrate to Britain because of WW II, married and stayed, but never quite got used to their culture and habits.

Sadly that Britain died with him somewhere in the early 1980s, but his books are worthwile reads. His name was George Mikes.

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The shortest chapter ever, written in 1948 in his first book:

>"SEX"
>Continental people have sex-lives. The British have hot water bottles.
(point finale)

Is this proto autism or evolved shitposting?

>>74184429
I'm just quoting a book. I have another one in the same fashion somewhere, written by a Dutchman in 1929, titled "the British - are they human?"

>>74184362
i wish this was still true

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>>74184502
Books liek these are pure goldmines. I swear the Brits were for a long time the laughing stock of Europe.

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>>74184362
>tfw no comfy hot water bottle

>>74184566
I know man, in his last book in 1977 he said "I've spend my life adjusting to the British peculiar ways and learning to appreciate it, only to find that it (Britain and its ways) is dying along with me."

>Royalty loyalists

>>74184630
Can you scan or type some of that pls?
>>74184634
I'm sleeping with one now. It's getting really cold at night

3 GAMES FOR BUS DRIVERS
If you become a bus driver there are 3 lovely games you must learn to play:
1 BLIND MAN'S BLUFF. When you turn right just signal by showing 2mm of your fingertips. It is great fun when motorists do not notice your signal and run into your huge bus with their tiny cars.
2 HIDE AND SEEK. Whenevery you approach a request stop hide behind a large lorry or another bus and when you have almost reached the stop, shoot off at a terrific speed. It is very amusing to see people shake their fists at you. It is 10 to 1 they miss some important business appointment.
3 HOSPITAL GAME. If you have to stop for some reason, never wait until the conductor rings the bell. If you start moving quickly and unexpectedly and if lucky in slippery weather, people will fall on top of one another. This looks extremely funny from the driver's seat. Sometimes the people will fall into a muddy pool, break their legs, make a fuss, but every society has its bores with no sense of humour.

>>74184819
Sorry m8 no scanner, but I can point you to similar works:

How to be a Brit (3 books by George Mikes on the Brits):
http://bookzz.org/book/2271437/0d20ce

The same author's making fun of the Japs:
http://bookzz.org/book/2161809/0e4e39

>>74184819
SOUL AND UNDERSTATEMENT
Foreigners have souls, the English haven't.

On the Continent you find any amount of people who sigh deeply for no conspicious reason, yearn, suffer and look in the air extremely sadly. This is soul.

The worst kidn of soul is the great Slav soul. People who suffer from it are usually very deep thinkers. They may say things like this: "Sometimes I am so merry and sometimes I am so sad. Can you explain why?" (You can't, don't try). Or they may say: "I am so mysterious... sometimes I wish I were somewhere else than where I am." (Don't say: "I wish you were") Or "When I am alone in a forest at night-time and jump from one tree to another, I often think that life is so strange".

All this is very deep^: and just soul, nothing else.
The English have no soul, they have the understatement instead.

If a continental youth wants to declare his love to a girl, he kneels down, tells her that she is the sweetest, the most charming and ravishing person in the world, that she has something in her, something peculiar and individual which only a few hundred thousand other women have and that he would be unable to live one more minute without her. Often, to give a little more emphasis to the statement, he shoots himself on the spot.

This is normal, week-day declaration of love in the more temperamental continental countries.

In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly: "I don't object to you, you know." If he is mad with passion, he may add: "I rather fancy you in fact."

If he wants to marry a girl he says: "I say.. would you?" If he wants to make an indecent proposal: "I say... what about..."

Overstatement too plays a considerable part in English social life. This takes mostly the form of someone remarking: "I say..." and then keeping silent for 3 days on end.

>>74185822
>>74186485
>>74186757
Based

>>74183667
It's true, in England people are extremely suspicious of perfection. If you do something too well or know something too unexpected it's basically seen as queer, unnatural, like you're trying to get one over on them or plotting something. Everything is supposed to be just a little bit off, a tiny bit incompetent, a bit rubbish here.
By the way, if you like this sort of thing James Hilton books are full of observations on ourselves

>>74186485
>>74186757
>>74186952
>>74187296
>>74187455
moar pls

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this thread is dildoes

>>74183667
>>74184630
Amazing. How can I find these books? I'd love to read them.

bamp

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Think he went to sleep
Belgumbro come back and feed my narcissism

bimp bamp bump

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My dad is like that to me because his mother was English. I swear he is the most unlikeable, most insufferable person equal to the bullies that I had to deal with in highschool.

It really begs the question though, why are the English so inhumanly hollow? It's as if there's nothing in them.

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>>74195041
I'm back with more :^)

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>>74184630
>Books liek these are pure goldmines. I swear the Brits were for a long time the laughing stock of Europe.
It goes both ways you cannibal.

Good thread

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>>74202134
nice one :^)

>>74202207
>>74202298
>>74202325
>>74202494
Are you scanning these or just screencapping a PDF? If there is a PDF, is there anyway you could make it available for us?
Thanks leopold, you're doing god's work.

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> The Belgian Anglophile is back.
I love you so much Anon. You deserve your own estate somewhere in the home counties.

>>74202569
It's an EPUB, can be downloaded here:

How to be a Brit (3 books by George Mikes on the Brits):
http://bookzz.org/book/2271437/0d20ce

>>74202647
Thank you for your kind words anon.

This is a very based thread, belgium-kun.

>>74204609
I agree with what he states, but jumping on the bandwagon of self-deprecating humour is partially the reason why we're so pessimistic anyway. Apathy is a big problem here and it doesn't help that everyone finds it mildly amusing to just not care anymore or among the students to find it actively debilitating to their moral crusade.

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>>74205102
He wrote that in 1977, a few years before his death. He added that the more British he became, over the years the more European Britain seemed to become. Pic related was the intro of his last work.

I think the apathy is a general West-European thing now. The sense of decline is all-present, and people either look away, give it another kick to hasten decline so to speak, or delude themselves into believing the multiculti-paradise propaganda.

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>>74206146

>>74205475
the 1970's were an abnormally shit time for the UK and I can see why someone would think that it would be the end. he still comes off as a bit bitter, although that might be due to our old adage of 'we can laugh at ourselves but you can't'. even if its comments by an British born Indian about how dry and pedantic we are, it still feels like it comes from a place of endearment rather than sweeping generalisations of how awful we all are.
perhaps I'm just being a prickly sod about it.

>Belgium-kun is back
Yess

>>74184202
Might I ask which of his books contain the excerpt on not knowing anything?

>>74206416
I didn't have the impression that the author is bitter about the British, but rather very endearing. He says he wrote his first book in 1948 in a mixture of bitterness and frustration after living there for a decade, because a friend of him who just started a publishing firm asked him for some material and he was a journalist. He said he was just venting and thought Brits would probably feel offended by it but to his surprise they loved it and it became a best-seller.

Since then he wrote many booklets, some on the English, some on other countries and races, but my impression was always that he was genuinely fond of the British and that he tried to adapt to their culture as best as he could.

>>74206589
How to be Inimitable: Coming to Age in England

(book 2 in the EPUB link I posted)

>>74198892
Thats quite an unfair thing to say, we are human, everyone else just lacks self control and/or deeper self reflection

>>74206245
>baked beans
>tomato ketchup
>monstrosities of the english kitchen

Thats a bit off, there is nothing wrong with them

>>74183667
what is this from

>>74185037
wtf

>>74210048
this, beans on toast is really nice

>>74212085
foreigners just dont appreciate baked beans in tomato sauce

>>74202134
On the first picture the sign on the palm-tree says "Dumping Snow or Rubble here is forbidden."

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>>74218178