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An angry indictment of all things British from a man with a grudge

a review of the book "The Angry Island: Hunting The English" (A.A. Gill, Simon & Schuster)
By ROSS RUNFOLA
as published in the Buffalo News
August 26, 2007

In this witty polemic, A.A. Gill never lets facts stand in the way of value judgement or bitter invective. Gill, a British newspaper columnist and writer, simply could not let a paucity of data interrupt any chance for provocative, satirical comment. "This is a collection of prejudice," Gill proudly writes, "This is not a book of facts. Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions."

The central thesis of Gill's, that the very national character of England is anger, flies in the face of the commonly held image of the English as a people with genteel reserve and refined etiquette. A hint of the antipathy Gill holds for the English is his claiming to be a Scot, although he only spent the first year there and his father was the famous English television director Michael Gill. He admits as much: "You may have suspected I don't like the English. One at a time I don't mind them. It's their collective persona I can't warm to. The lumpen and louty, course, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd of England."

Gill attempts to prove his prejudice concerning the naked rage of the English is a collection of 16 abrasive essays that dissect English cultural norms. The historical basis of England's dark heart and emotional instability is found, according to Gill, in how they divert their anger into areas such as: animals ("The English love of animals - may be because they are incapable of being open, friendly and honest with other people"), voice ("Accent and pronounciation are a never-ending source of subtle snobbery and fury for the English"), nostalgia ("An American pointed out that the English are the only people on Earth who manage to feel schadenfreude about themselves"), class ("The point about class is that it is a conceit, a plot device. Class in England is a cultural form . . . It has a set of rules that everyone in the country understands; they just don't apply to anyone's real life today"), sport ("Football matches are arranged as diplomacy and goodwill; they are also the fulcrums of animosity, violence and tribal pride").

Amid all the ranting, Gill stumbles on a gold nugget: "England and the English claim two muses of their own. The first is history and the second is humor . . . Humor is England's obsession. Jokes are the English social currency . . . English humor is . . . aggressive, bombastic . . . loud, gangish and general." Granting Gill's hypothesis that humor enables the English to mask their true feelings, cruelty also appears at the heart of English humor. Anyone who has watched "Monty Python's Flying Circus" or heard the rude insults liberally doled out to guests by hotelier John Cleese (who was a member of the Monty Python team) in the classic 1970's television comedy "The Fawlty Towers" would agree with Gill that the English are an angry race. Although Gill never tells the reader what the English are so angry about, underneath his own anger are hilarious "bon mots" that linger long after "The Angry Island" is finished.

ROSS T. RUNFOLA is a Buffalo attorney and freelance writer.