It was in 1940 that the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom noted that Britain and the United States would have to be "somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage." This situation has persisted until the present. Yet, despite the closeness of co-operation in the intervening years, there is among Americans a surprising lack of knowledge about modern Britain. This book is an effort to provide a picture of that country—"warts and all." Such a book must

They called thee Merry England in old time. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate on their condition. CHARLES LAMB To begin : the British defy definition. Although they are spoken of as "the British," they are not one people but four. And of these four, three—the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish—are fiercely jealous of their national identity. The English are less concerned. They have been a nation a very long time, and only on occasions like St.

Kings are not born; they are made by universal hallucination. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW A land where kings may be beloved and monarchy can teach republics how they may be free. VILDA SAUVAGE OWENS The monarchy is the crowning anachronism of British society. It stands virtually unchallenged at the summit of that society. In this most political of Western nations, one eternally bubbling with new ideas on the ways and means by which men can govern themselves, the thousand-year-old monarchy is admired, re

Parliament can do anything but turn a boy into a girl. ENGLISH PROVERB Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself. WOODROW WILSON The British are pre-eminently a political people, as Americans are, and as Germans, Russians, and Italians are not. They regard politics and government as serious, honorable, and, above all, interesting occupations. To many Britons the techniques of governm

A PARTY AND A WAY OF LIFE The Conservative party have always said that, on the whole, their policy meant that people had to fill up fewer forms than under the policies of other parties. SIR ALAN HERBERT The man for whom the law exists—the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame man. HENRY THOREAU Although they have little in common otherwise, the Great American Public and the radical wing of the British Labor Party share a strange mental image of the British Conservative. They see him as a red

POLITICAL MACHINE OR MORAL CRUSADE? The idea of Socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state of society cannot be manufactured—it must grow. Society is an organism, not a machine. HENRY GEORGE We are all Socialists nowadays. EDWARD VII WHEN PRINCE OF WALES " The Tories won the election because they understood the changes that had taken place since 1945," said a Labor politician in 1955. "We misunderstood them and we lost. Yet we call ourselve

Revolutions begin with infatuation and end with incredulity. In their origin proud assurance is dominant; the ruling opinion disdains doubt and will not endure contradiction. At their completion skepticism takes the place of disdain and there is no longer any care for individual convictions or any belief in truth. F.P.G. GUIZOT Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. WENDELL PHILLIPS The chan

NEW CLASSES AND NEW HORIZONS There are but two families in the world—have-much and have-little. CERVANTES Society is constantly advancing in knowledge. The tail is now where the head was some generations ago. But the head and the tail still keep their distance. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Marie Lloyd , the darling of the music halls, sang a song that contained the deathless line: "A little of what you fancy does you good." In addition to their evangelism, their occasional ruthlessness, the British

The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart. RUDYARD KIPLING We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies; our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow. LORD PALMERSTON More than any other Western European nation, Britain has been involved in mankind. Geography placed these islands on one of the main routes between the Old World and the New. Ambition, avarice, and absent-mindedness combined to create the greatest of modern empires. Knaves

STRENGTHS AND STRESSES If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms—never! never! never! WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia to be free, sovereign and independent s

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. CHARLES DICKENS It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy. HAROLD LASKI We must now take a closer look at the British economy as it is today. This is a big subject, one well worth a long book. It is my purpose in this informal estimate of our

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice. SAMUEL JOHNSON I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite while a rat-catching match in Whitechapel is low. T.H. HUXLEY Obviously there is great deal more to British society than political and economic problems, although a casual visitor might not think so. Visiting pundits find themselves immersed in the profundities of the Foreign Office or following the ideologica

I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. WILLIAM BLAKE Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Is the long story of British greatness nearly done? That

The text of this book was set on the Linotype in a face called TIMES ROMAN , designed by STANLEY MORISON for The Times ( London ), and first introduced by that newspaper in the middle nineteen thirties . Among typographers and designers of the twentieth century, Stanley Morison has been a strong forming influence, as typographical adviser to the English Monotype Corporation, as a director of two distinguished English publishing houses, and as a writer of sensibility, erudition, and keen practica

Drew Middleton was born in New York City in 1913. After being graduated from Syracuse University, he went into newspaper work, and in 1938 became a foreign correspondent. Since then he has been chief of The New York Times bureaus in England, Russia, and Germany. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, he was in London covering the operations of the Royal Air Force, and he later sent his dispatches from Supreme Headquarters of the AEF. In the decade since the war, Mr. Middleton's reporting and int