Concluding my reading of Stephen Fry's non-fiction, I'm trundling through his collection of writings from back in the late 80s and early 90s,
Paperweight. It's a charming, fizzing, brilliant book that would appeal to all senses of Britishness, logic, and humour that we come to associate with a national treasure. My cheeks have never cramped like this before after extended periods of grinning without even realising it. In amongst a little piece he wrote for
The Listener magazine in 1989, Stephen explores the old cliche that the British are a tolerant nation. "It is a bizarre fact", he says, "that the more widespread and accepted the cliche the less basis in truth it is likely to have". He claims we have a "squalid history of intolerance", and I'm inclined to agree with him after he lays out a few examples for us. Contrary to popular belief, he reminds us, we have a useless legal system, a state-defined religion based on the family-values of Henry VIII, a history of imprisoning poachers, blasphemers, witches, and homosexuals, and a long tradition of censorship in the arts (pertinent in these days of BBC clamp-down). Admittedly, I added that Henry VIII bit myself, but I thought it compounded the point. Nevertheless, Fry is a traditionalist and can't help but love some aspects of Britain; plus, he manages to throw in a Shakespeare reference for good measure.
But I do loved this country, as Cordelia loved Lear. All the Gonerils and Regans who protest such a vast, sweeping, unthinking love seem to be doing the least to make it a place worth living in. Shouting that we are tolerant does not make us so: claiming without the slightest knowledge of other countries that this institution or that tradition within Britain is 'the best in the world' only serves to make us look ridiculous.
Concluding my reading of Stephen Fry's non-fiction, I'm trundling through his collection of writings from back in the late 80s and early 90s, Paperweight. It's a charming, fizzing, brilliant book that would appeal to all senses of Britishness, logic, and humour that we come to associate with a national treasure. My cheeks have never cramped like this before after extended periods of grinning without even realising it. In amongst a little piece he wrote for The Listener magazine in 1989, Stephen explores the old cliche that the British are a tolerant nation. "It is a bizarre fact", he says, "that the more widespread and accepted the cliche the less basis in truth it is likely to have". He claims we have a "squalid history of intolerance", and I'm inclined to agree with him after he lays out a few examples for us. Contrary to popular belief, he reminds us, we have a useless legal system, a state-defined religion based on the family-values of Henry VIII, a history of imprisoning poachers, blasphemers, witches, and homosexuals, and a long tradition of censorship in the arts (pertinent in these days of BBC clamp-down). Admittedly, I added that Henry VIII bit myself, but I thought it compounded the point. Nevertheless, Fry is a traditionalist and can't help but love some aspects of Britain; plus, he manages to throw in a Shakespeare reference for good measure.
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