Britain's Many Gifts To The World
Sterling Times
03/03/2007
There are times when Londoners must offer a silent prayer for the joys of living in their maddening, overcrowded, magnificent city. This week, while crossing Hungerford Bridge at night, and gazing along the river towards St Paul's, and then, the next day, wandering through St James's Park, resplendent in early spring, it was possible to believe that one was right at the heart of the civilised world.
Yet, as we know, "into many a green valley drifts the appalling snow".
The avalanche came this time in the form of a book written by an American advertising executive and historian manqué, one Steven A Grasse (the 'A' is intended, one supposes, to confer authority).
According to this furious scribbler, we, the English, are rotten to the core, and he intends to jolly well make us pay for our many sins of commission and omission.
From his retreat in Philadelphia, close by the Liberty Bell, Grasse has thrown down a provocation called The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined The World." Genocide, two World Wars, global warming, the drug trade, even the mess that was Vietnam: yes, everything was hatched in the land of afternoon tea and crumpets.
That's a mighty bow to draw, you must admit. Nor does he stop there. Grasse has lent his voice to something called the International Coalition for British Reparations, whose stated aim is to force Britain to cough up 58 trillion dollars (or is it zillion?) to compensate those peoples violated in our name down the centuries. What fun they must all have in Philly.
Matey could be suffering from some advanced form of mental illness, or simply enjoying a prank. On the other hand, he might be entirely serious.
"I want to start a debate," he has said. "To throw a rock in the pond and watch the ripples." So let's not disappoint him.
It is best to launch any rebuttal by borrowing from the treasury of one of the greatest of all Englishmen. "All censure of a man's self is oblique praise," wrote Dr Johnson. "It is in order to show how much he can spare."
As it is with people, so it is with nations. The English direct so much criticism at themselves that we have nothing to fear from these latest poison-tipped arrows. D H Lawrence and John Osborne, among others, damned England in language a good deal more fiery than anything that Grasse can manage, though in their case it was partly motivated by self-loathing.
Anybody who visited England this week would not necessarily recognise a land of milk and honey. The NHS is falling to pieces, our children are growing fatter by the day, and our state schools are so good that many universities will no longer accept super-duper exam grades as a mark of scholastic achievement.
