Wednesday, July 19, 2017

I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire

From English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable by Lacey Baldwin Smith. Page 1.
No people have engendered quite so much critical acclaim or earned such unrestrained and bitter censure as the British. The tight little island has been extolled as the Athens of modern times, the cradle of ideas and institutions that has shaped entire societies and encompassed the globe. Conversely the British, secure in their island isolation off the western shores of the European Continent, have driven Europe and indeed the rest of the world to fury by their insolent self-satisfaction and perfidious hypocrisy. For many, the words attributed to Duncan Spaeth still ring true – "I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark."

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