Takt og tone

Følgende udtalelser fra britiske poeter og forfattere kan også give et indtryk af hvad og hvordan Storbritannien er:

"This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house."

(Shakespeare: 'Richard II')

"When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain,
sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles  - but never England"

(George Mikes: 'How to be an Alien')

" At the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the proscription of "earnestness". Although we may not have a monopoly on humour, or even on irony, the English are probably more acutely sensitive that any other nation to the distinction between "serious", and "solemn", between "sincerity" and "earnestness". This distinction is crucial to any kind of understanding of Englishness. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: if you are not able to grasp these subtle but vital differences, you will never understand the English - and even if you speak the language fluently, you will never feel or appear entirely at home in conversation with the English. Your English may be impeccable, but your behavioural "grammar" will be full of glaring errors."

(Kate Fox: 'Watching the English')

"Although England is a highly class-conscious culture, the real-life ways in which the English think about social class - and determine a person's position in the class structure - bear little relation either to simplistic three-tier (upper, middle, working) models, or to the rather abstract alphabetical systems (A, B, C1, C2, D, E), based entirely on occupation, favoured by market research experts. A school teacher and an estate agent would both technically be "middle class". They might even both live in a terraced house, drive a Volvo, drink in the same pub and earn roughly the same annual income. But we judge social class in much more subtle and complex ways: precisely how you arrange, furnish and decorate your terraced house; not just the make of the car you drive, but whether you wash it yourself on Sundays, take it to a car wash or rely on the English climate to sluice off the worst of the dirt for you. Similar fine distinctions are applied to exactly what, where, when, how and with whom you eat and drink; the words you use and how you pronounce them; where and how you shop; the clothes you wear; the pets you keep; how you spend your free time; the cat-up lines you use and so on."  

(Kate Fox: 'Watching the English')