How to be a brit
How to be a brit
How to Be a Brit
“There’ll always be an England…” as the song goes. 
1. A popular War-inspired patriotic song, “There’ll Always Be an England,” released in 1939, about the same time as George Mikes’s How to Be a Brit. Although with slightly different sentiment.
Its famous lines include:
“There’ll always be an England
While there’s a country lane,
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.
There’ll always be an England
While there’s a busy street,
Wherever there’s a turning wheel,
A million marching feet…” 1 This ‘blessed plot’ persists in part because it attracts and seduces into staying the talented, broad-minded, and trenchantly observant people worldwide. People like the Hungarian-born Gyorge “George” Mikes (pronounced Mee-KESH; February 15, 1912 – August 30, 1987), who was sent to England as a journalist on assignment and liked it so much he stayed.
In 1946, somewhere between learning the Queen’s English and mastering a queue of one, Mikes wrote an unexpected classic, How To Be an Alien, which was later adapted and reissued as How to Be a Brit.
I believe, without undue modesty, that I have certain qualifications to write on ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien myself. What is more, I have been an alien all my life. Only during the first twenty-six years of my life I was not aware of this plain fact. I was living in my own country, a country full of aliens, and I noticed nothing particular or irregular about myself; then I came to England, and you can imagine my painful surprise.
Mikes wrote his guide to becoming British knowing full well “you can be British but you’ll never be English.” The guide was intelligent, thoughtful, all-encompassing, but by Mikes’s own admission, not intended to be humorous.
But it was humorous. The kind of head-nodding humor rooted in squeamish truths. The kind of humor the British embrace. Mikes’s observations vary from class structure, the British view of foreigners, their love of gardening, wealth, snobbery, and generally inexplicable habits:
Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in shadow and darkness, upside down or insight out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication about the names of the streets.
2. A reputable Massachusetts Senator, Ted Kennedy perhaps, once noted that if one cannot read Boston street signs (which are far, far worse than England’s), then perhaps one doesn’t belong in the Boston. 2
Mikes’s writing excels in its observation of the hypocritical British investment in “getting along with one another” in micro-interactions while ignoring this value completely at the macro geopolitical level.
In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state that in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.
The need to be superficially calm and polite (and tend to understatement) leads to the preponderance of discussion about the weather, a rare connective tissue of British society. 3. As an expat American living in Britain, my main criticism of the general British society, especially when compared to my native America, is that while the British are extremely respectful and polite, they often lack warmth. Warmth being, perhaps, too emotive. The downside of American warmth, while lovely, is it can also turn into aggression, anger.
I prefer emotional distance, having had my fill of American tempers, but everyone has their own preference. Many of my Eastern-European friends who live in London have made similar assessments. 3
This is the most important topic in the land. Do not be misled by memories of your youth when, on the Continent, wanting to describe someone as exceptionally dull, you remarked: ‘He is a type who would discuss the weather with you.’ In England this is an ever-interesting, even thrilling topic, and you must be good at discussing the weather.
Of course, this is—it must be—a modern convention, perhaps a relic of Victorian uptightness. I cannot fathom Henry VIII enduring long chats about the ailments of the sky as a pretext for social engagement.
The core of How to Be a Brit is this: what we must remember is Britain was, at some point, possibly recently, someone else’s dreaded future. And to decay, you must have had risen to great heights. (And “in decay” is a wonderful place to be.)
Ups and downs. Illustration by Nicolas Bentley.
“There will always be an England… Indeed, but what England is, to the likes of Mikes (and the nostalgic memoirs of Laurie Lee, Penelope Lively, and Stephen Fry is not what it will be. This tension, this divide between the imagined past and the imagined future, has become much more apparent in recent years and even fractious. 4. People longing to hold on to a memory of what was hold fast against what might be. I don’t blame anyone for this, and this isn’t the place for politics.
But there are more cars honking in London than there used to be. A habit to be found in America and Egypt, I’ve found from personal experience. That is not a British thing.
What is interesting about Mikes is that despite all this difficulty, he still chose to stay in Britain. As many do (as I have). Is he telling us subtly that “religion, food, politics, race—it matters not. But please, for goodness’ sake, learn how to queue? And go quietly on your way?” 4
Ultimately, How to Be a Brit seizes on the limitations of “being” a Brit. (Which is likely a limitation in any country in the world.)
Study these rules, and imitate the English. There can be only one result: if you don’t succeed in imitating them you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous.
The paradoxical nature of any country is that the same heavy-set rules and customs that make a country what it is also initiate a wall between it and its most hopeful aliens. Is that cruelty? It can be. But isn’t necessarily. Like most things human, it is utterly complex and susceptible to the best and worst things we are.
Gyorgy “George” Mikes in 1960. Source: Fortepan
Accompany this delightful, poignant spot on one of our most important modern nation-states with Peter Mayle’s narrative of making a home in France: the Englishman abroad finds his most British habits buffed and worn under the French way. Or the nostalgic memoirs of Laurie Lee, a man the same age as Mikes who grew up in a small Cotswold village. Or the less-rosy account of impoverished England from its most famous political dissenter, George Orwell.
England at sunset. Photo by British nature photographer Joshua Burch.
You might also enjoy my study of walls and what they are, how they are used, misused. A bit conceptional but thematically relevant. What are walls if not ways we fortify ourselves and things we care about? Britain has many walls (and wall builders).
How to be a brit
HOW TO BE AN ALIEN
Preface to the 24th Impression
I. How to be a General Alien
A Warning to Beginners
Soul and Understatement
A Word on Some Publishers
How Not to be Clever
How to Compromise
How to be a Hypocrite
About Simple Joys
The National Passion
Three Small Points
II. How to be a Particular Alien
A Bloomsbury Intellectual
How to be a Film Producer
Three Games for Bus Drivers
How to Plan a Town
Journalism or the Freedom of the Press
HOW TO BE INIMITABLE
How to be Prosperous
On Trying to Remain Poor
How to be Class Conscious
The New Ruling Class
How to Avoid Travelling
On Wine Snobbery
How to Save the World
In Praise of Television
On the Art of Conversation
How to Stop Road Traffic
How to Take Your Pleasure Sadly
On Not Knowing English
On Not Knowing Foreign Languages
On Not Knowing Anything
On the Decline of Muddle
On Being Unfair
On Minding One’s Own Business
How to Avoid Work
Everybody is Hungarian
HOW TO BE DECADENT
For Some Time There’ll be an England …
On the Elegance of Decay
On How Not to be Reserved
On the National Passion
On Not Complaining
How to Get Lost in London
How to Panic Quietly
On Fiddling Through
The Generation Gap
Is the Economy Really on the Mend?
How to Lose an Empire
How to Become a Colony
On Ceasing to be an Island
A Letter from André Deutsch
HOW TO BE A BRIT
George Mikes was born in 1912 in Siklós, Hungary. He studied law and received his doctorate at Budapest University. He became a journalist and was sent to London as a correspondent to cover the Munich crisis. He came for a fortnight but stayed on and made England his home. During the Second World War he broadcast for the BBC Hungarian Service where he remained until 1951. He continued working as a freelance critic, broadcaster and writer until his death in 1987.
In 1946 he published How to be an Alien, which identified the author as a humourist, although he had not intended the book to be funny. It sold more than 450,000 copies, and with How to be Inimitable and How to be Decadent became How to be a Brit, which has sold more than 90,000 copies.
His other books include Über Alles, Little Cabbages, Shakespeare and Myself, Italy for Beginners, How to Unite Nations, How to Scrape Skies, How to Tango, The Land of the Rising Yen, How to Run a Stately Home (with the Duke of Bedford), Switzerland for Beginners, Tsi-Tsa, English Humour for Beginners, How to be Poor, How to be a Guru and How to be God. He wrote a study of the Hungarian Revolution and is the author of A Study in Infamy, an analysis of the Hungarian secret political police system, Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship and The Riches of the Poor: A Journey round the World Health Organization. On his seventieth birthday, in 1982, he published his autobiography, How to be Seventy.
Nicolas Bentley was born in Highgate in 1907 and educated at University College School, London, and Heatherley School of Art. He was an artist, author, publisher and illustrator of more than sixty books – including works by Hilaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot, Damon Runyon, Lawrence Durrell and many others. He died in 1978.
Back in 1945, when André Deutsch was trying to build up a new publishing firm, he asked me if I had anything for him. I told him that I was fiddling about with some little essays which were linked by a basic idea: how to be an alien. Why I was staying on the Isle of Wight I can no longer remember, but I must have been doing so, or why would he have come there to collect the manuscript?
He enjoyed what he read, but told me that there was not enough of it for a book. So I sat down one afternoon and added five thousand more words. If anyone had said to me that I ought to take more trouble, since forty years later this book would still be selling about thirty thousand copies a year in paperback, not to mention going into a new hardback edition for which I would have to write a preface – well, I would have told that person, gently but firmly, that he or she ought to have his or her head examined. Indeed I would probably have said the same thing if told that I would still be here to write anything in forty years time, and that André would still be around – though disguised as a distinguished old boy – to publish it.
How to be an Alien was a cri de coeur, a desperate cry for help: oh God, look at me, I have fallen among strange people! ‘But it’s such a funny book,’ people say. Perhaps it is. I hope it is. But it’s not unknown for shrieks, moans, whoops and ululations to sound funny to the uninvolved.
In due course I added two further shrieks to that first one: How to be Inimitable in 1960, when we had started to slip but still had an Empire and refused to acknowledge much change; and How to be Decadent in 1977. All three books were illustrated by my great and much-missed friend, Nicolas Bentley.
During all those years since 1945, something rather curious was happening: as I strove to stop being an alien and to become a true Brit, Britain was striving to cast off its peculiar and lofty insularity and become one with the aliens, a part of the Continent (almost), just another member of the E.E.C. It often seems to me that I have failed in my endeavour; but compared with Britain I have succeeded gloriously.
A HANDBOOK FOR BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED PUPILS
‘I have seen much to hate here, much to forgive. But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.’
ALICE DUER MILLER: The White Cliffs
Preface to the 24th Impression
The reception given to this book when it first appeared in the autumn of 1946, was at once a pleasant surprise and a disappointment for me. A surprise, because the reception was so kind; a disappointment for the same reason.
The first part of this statement needs little amplification. Even people who are not closely connected with the publishing trade will be able to realize that it is very nice – I’m sorry, I’d better be a little more English: a not totally unpleasant thing for a completely unknown author to run into three impressions within a few weeks of publication and thereafter into another twenty-one.
What is my grievance, then? It is that this book has completely changed the pictu
re I used to cherish of myself. This was to be a book of defiance. Before its publication I felt myself a man who was going to tell the English where to get off. I had spoken my mind regardless of consequences; I thought I was brave and outspoken and expected either to go unnoticed or to face a storm. But no storm came. I expected the English to be up in arms against me but they patted me on the back; I expected the British nation to rise in wrath but all they said, was: ‘quite amusing’. It was indeed a bitter disappointment.
While the Roumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. ‘We want our friends to see us in this light,’ the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. ‘But it’s not such a favourable light,’ I protested feebly. ‘It’s a very human light and that is the most favourable,’ retorted the official. I was crushed.
A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said:
And threw the book into the fire.
He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another.
Since then I have actually written about a dozen books; but I might as well have never written anything else. I remained the author of How to be an Alien even after I had published a collection of serious essays. Even Mr Somerset Maugham complained about this type of treatment bitterly and repeatedly. Whatever he did, he was told that he would never write another Of Human Bondage; Arnold Bennett in spite of fifty other works remained the author of The Old Wives’ Tale and nothing else; and Mr Robert Graves is just the author of the Claudius books. These authors are much more eminent than I am; but their problem is the same. At the moment I am engaged in writing a 750-page picaresque novel set in ancient Sumeria. It is taking shape nicely and I am going to get the Nobel Prize for it. But it will be of no use: I shall still remain the author of How to be an Alien.
I am not complaining. One’s books start living their independent lives soon enough, just like one’s children. I love this book; it has done almost as much for me as I have done for it. Yet, however loving a parent you may be, it hurts your pride a little if you are only known, acknowledged and accepted as the father of your eldest child.
In 1946 I took this manuscript to André Deutsch, a young man who had just decided to try his luck as a publisher. He used to go, once upon a time, to the same school as my younger brother. I knew him from the old days and it was quite obvious to me even then, in Budapest, when he was only twelve and wore shorts, that he would make an excellent publisher in London if he only had the chance. So I offered my book to him and as, at that time, he could not get manuscripts from better known authors, he accepted it with a sigh. He suggested that Nicolas Bentley should be asked to ‘draw the pictures’. I liked the idea but I said he would turn the suggestion down. Once again I was right: he did turn it down. Eventually, however, he was persuaded to change his mind.
Mr Deutsch was at that time working for a different firm. Four years after the publication of this book, and after the subsequent publication of three other Mikes-Bentley books, he left this firm while I stayed with them and went on working with another popular and able cartoonist, David Langdon. Now, however, André Deutsch has bought all the rights of my past and future output from his former firm and the original team of Deutsch, Bentley and myself are together again under the imprint of the first named gentleman. We are all twelve years older and Mr Deutsch does not wear shorts any more, or not in the office, at any rate.
‘When are you going to write another How to be an Alien?’ Deutsch and Bentley ask me from time to time and I am sure they mean it kindly.
They cannot quite make out the reply I mutter in answer to their friendly query. It is:
‘Never, if I can help it.’
London, May 1958
I believe, without undue modesty, that I have certain qualifications to write on ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien myself. What is more, I have been an alien all my life. Only during the first twenty-six years of my life I was not aware of this plain fact. I was living in my own country, a country full of aliens, and I noticed nothing particular or irregular about myself; then I came to England, and you can imagine my painful surprise.
Like all great and important discoveries it was a matter of a few seconds. You probably all know from your schooldays how Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation. An apple fell on his head. This incident set him thinking for a minute or two, then he exclaimed joyfully: ‘Of course! The gravitation constant is the acceleration per second that a mass of one gram causes at a distance of one centimetre.’ You were also taught that James Watt one day went into the kitchen where cabbage was cooking and saw the lid of the saucepan rise and fall. ‘Now let me think,’ he murmured – ‘let me think.’ Then he struck his forehead and the steam engine was discovered. It was the same with me, although circumstances were rather different.
It was like this. Some years ago I spent a lot of time with a young lady who was very proud and conscious of being English. Once she asked me – to my great surprise – whether I would marry her. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I will not. My mother would never agree to my marrying a foreigner.’ She looked at me a little surprised and irritated, and retorted: ‘I, a foreigner? What a silly thing to say. I am English. You are the foreigner. And your mother, too.’ I did not give in. ‘In Budapest, too?’ I asked her. ‘Everywhere,’ she declared with determination. ‘Truth does not depend on geography. What is true in England is also true in Hungary and in North Borneo and Venezuela and everywhere.’
I saw that this theory was as irrefutable as it was simple. I was startled and upset. Mainly because of my mother whom I loved and respected. Now, I suddenly learned what she really was.
It was a shame and bad taste to be an alien, and it is no use pretending otherwise. There is no way out of it. A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him. He may become British; he can never become English.
So it is better to reconcile yourself to the sorrowful reality. There are some noble English people who might forgive you. There are some magnanimous souls who realize that it is not your fault, only your misfortune. They will treat you with condescension, understanding and sympathy. They will invite you to their homes. Just as they keep lap-dogs and other pets, they are quite prepared to keep a few foreigners.
The title of this book, How to be an Alien, consequently expresses more than it should. How to be an alien? One should not be an alien at all. There are certain rules, however, which have to be followed if you want to make yourself as acceptable and civilized as you possibly can.
Study these rules, and imitate the English. There can be only one result: if you don’t succeed in imitating them you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous.
I. HOW TO BE A GENERAL ALIEN
A Warning to Beginners
In England* everything is the other way round.
On Sundays on the Continent even the poorest person puts on his best suit, tries to look respectable, and at the same time the life of the country becomes gay and cheerful; in England even the richest peer or motor-manufacturer dresses in some peculiar rags, does not shave, and the country be
comes dull and dreary. On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided – the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull. On the Continent Sunday papers appear on Monday; in England – a country of exotic oddities – they appear on Sunday. On the Continent people use a fork as though a fork were a shovel; in England they turn it upside down and push everything – including peas – on top of it.
On a continental bus approaching a request-stop the conductor rings the bell if he wants his bus to go on without stopping; in England you ring the bell if you want the bus to stop. On the Continent stray cats are judged individually on their merit – some are loved, some are only respected; in England they are universally worshipped as in ancient Egypt. On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.
On the Continent public orators try to learn to speak fluently and smoothly; in England they take a special course in Oxonian stuttering. On the Continent learned persons love to quote Aristotle, Horace, Montaigne and show off their knowledge; in England only uneducated people show off their knowledge, nobody quotes Latin and Greek authors in the course of a conversation, unless he has never read them.
On the Continent almost every nation whether little or great has openly declared at one time or another that it is superior to all other nations; the English fight heroic wars to combat these dangerous ideas without ever mentioning which is really the most superior race in the world. Continental people are sensitive and touchy; the English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour – they are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour. On the Continent the population consists of a small percentage of criminals, a small percentage of honest people and the rest are a vague transition between the two; in England you find a small percentage of criminals and the rest are honest people. On the other hand, people on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.
How to be a brit
HOW TO BE AN ALIEN
Preface to the 24th Impression
I. How to be a General Alien
A Warning to Beginners
Soul and Understatement
A Word on Some Publishers
How Not to be Clever
How to Compromise
How to be a Hypocrite
About Simple Joys
The National Passion
Three Small Points
II. How to be a Particular Alien
A Bloomsbury Intellectual
How to be a Film Producer
Three Games for Bus Drivers
How to Plan a Town
Journalism or the Freedom of the Press
HOW TO BE INIMITABLE
How to be Prosperous
On Trying to Remain Poor
How to be Class Conscious
The New Ruling Class
How to Avoid Travelling
On Wine Snobbery
How to Save the World
In Praise of Television
On the Art of Conversation
How to Stop Road Traffic
How to Take Your Pleasure Sadly
On Not Knowing English
On Not Knowing Foreign Languages
On Not Knowing Anything
On the Decline of Muddle
On Being Unfair
On Minding One’s Own Business
How to Avoid Work
Everybody is Hungarian
HOW TO BE DECADENT
For Some Time There’ll be an England …
On the Elegance of Decay
On How Not to be Reserved
On the National Passion
On Not Complaining
How to Get Lost in London
How to Panic Quietly
On Fiddling Through
The Generation Gap
Is the Economy Really on the Mend?
How to Lose an Empire
How to Become a Colony
On Ceasing to be an Island
A Letter from André Deutsch
HOW TO BE A BRIT
George Mikes was born in 1912 in Siklós, Hungary. He studied law and received his doctorate at Budapest University. He became a journalist and was sent to London as a correspondent to cover the Munich crisis. He came for a fortnight but stayed on and made England his home. During the Second World War he broadcast for the BBC Hungarian Service where he remained until 1951. He continued working as a freelance critic, broadcaster and writer until his death in 1987.
In 1946 he published How to be an Alien, which identified the author as a humourist, although he had not intended the book to be funny. It sold more than 450,000 copies, and with How to be Inimitable and How to be Decadent became How to be a Brit, which has sold more than 90,000 copies.
His other books include Über Alles, Little Cabbages, Shakespeare and Myself, Italy for Beginners, How to Unite Nations, How to Scrape Skies, How to Tango, The Land of the Rising Yen, How to Run a Stately Home (with the Duke of Bedford), Switzerland for Beginners, Tsi-Tsa, English Humour for Beginners, How to be Poor, How to be a Guru and How to be God. He wrote a study of the Hungarian Revolution and is the author of A Study in Infamy, an analysis of the Hungarian secret political police system, Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship and The Riches of the Poor: A Journey round the World Health Organization. On his seventieth birthday, in 1982, he published his autobiography, How to be Seventy.
Nicolas Bentley was born in Highgate in 1907 and educated at University College School, London, and Heatherley School of Art. He was an artist, author, publisher and illustrator of more than sixty books – including works by Hilaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot, Damon Runyon, Lawrence Durrell and many others. He died in 1978.
Back in 1945, when André Deutsch was trying to build up a new publishing firm, he asked me if I had anything for him. I told him that I was fiddling about with some little essays which were linked by a basic idea: how to be an alien. Why I was staying on the Isle of Wight I can no longer remember, but I must have been doing so, or why would he have come there to collect the manuscript?
He enjoyed what he read, but told me that there was not enough of it for a book. So I sat down one afternoon and added five thousand more words. If anyone had said to me that I ought to take more trouble, since forty years later this book would still be selling about thirty thousand copies a year in paperback, not to mention going into a new hardback edition for which I would have to write a preface – well, I would have told that person, gently but firmly, that he or she ought to have his or her head examined. Indeed I would probably have said the same thing if told that I would still be here to write anything in forty years time, and that André would still be around – though disguised as a distinguished old boy – to publish it.
How to be an Alien was a cri de coeur, a desperate cry for help: oh God, look at me, I have fallen among strange people! ‘But it’s such a funny book,’ people say. Perhaps it is. I hope it is. But it’s not unknown for shrieks, moans, whoops and ululations to sound funny to the uninvolved.
In due course I added two further shrieks to that first one: How to be Inimitable in 1960, when we had started to slip but still had an Empire and refused to acknowledge much change; and How to be Decadent in 1977. All three books were illustrated by my great and much-missed friend, Nicolas Bentley.
During all those years since 1945, something rather curious was happening: as I strove to stop being an alien and to become a true Brit, Britain was striving to cast off its peculiar and lofty insularity and become one with the aliens, a part of the Continent (almost), just another member of the E.E.C. It often seems to me that I have failed in my endeavour; but compared with Britain I have succeeded gloriously.
A HANDBOOK FOR BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED PUPILS
‘I have seen much to hate here, much to forgive. But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.’
ALICE DUER MILLER: The White Cliffs
Preface to the 24th Impression
The reception given to this book when it first appeared in the autumn of 1946, was at once a pleasant surprise and a disappointment for me. A surprise, because the reception was so kind; a disappointment for the same reason.
The first part of this statement needs little amplification. Even people who are not closely connected with the publishing trade will be able to realize that it is very nice – I’m sorry, I’d better be a little more English: a not totally unpleasant thing for a completely unknown author to run into three impressions within a few weeks of publication and thereafter into another twenty-one.
What is my grievance, then? It is that this book has completely changed the pictu
re I used to cherish of myself. This was to be a book of defiance. Before its publication I felt myself a man who was going to tell the English where to get off. I had spoken my mind regardless of consequences; I thought I was brave and outspoken and expected either to go unnoticed or to face a storm. But no storm came. I expected the English to be up in arms against me but they patted me on the back; I expected the British nation to rise in wrath but all they said, was: ‘quite amusing’. It was indeed a bitter disappointment.
While the Roumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. ‘We want our friends to see us in this light,’ the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. ‘But it’s not such a favourable light,’ I protested feebly. ‘It’s a very human light and that is the most favourable,’ retorted the official. I was crushed.
A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said:
And threw the book into the fire.
He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another.
Since then I have actually written about a dozen books; but I might as well have never written anything else. I remained the author of How to be an Alien even after I had published a collection of serious essays. Even Mr Somerset Maugham complained about this type of treatment bitterly and repeatedly. Whatever he did, he was told that he would never write another Of Human Bondage; Arnold Bennett in spite of fifty other works remained the author of The Old Wives’ Tale and nothing else; and Mr Robert Graves is just the author of the Claudius books. These authors are much more eminent than I am; but their problem is the same. At the moment I am engaged in writing a 750-page picaresque novel set in ancient Sumeria. It is taking shape nicely and I am going to get the Nobel Prize for it. But it will be of no use: I shall still remain the author of How to be an Alien.
I am not complaining. One’s books start living their independent lives soon enough, just like one’s children. I love this book; it has done almost as much for me as I have done for it. Yet, however loving a parent you may be, it hurts your pride a little if you are only known, acknowledged and accepted as the father of your eldest child.
In 1946 I took this manuscript to André Deutsch, a young man who had just decided to try his luck as a publisher. He used to go, once upon a time, to the same school as my younger brother. I knew him from the old days and it was quite obvious to me even then, in Budapest, when he was only twelve and wore shorts, that he would make an excellent publisher in London if he only had the chance. So I offered my book to him and as, at that time, he could not get manuscripts from better known authors, he accepted it with a sigh. He suggested that Nicolas Bentley should be asked to ‘draw the pictures’. I liked the idea but I said he would turn the suggestion down. Once again I was right: he did turn it down. Eventually, however, he was persuaded to change his mind.
Mr Deutsch was at that time working for a different firm. Four years after the publication of this book, and after the subsequent publication of three other Mikes-Bentley books, he left this firm while I stayed with them and went on working with another popular and able cartoonist, David Langdon. Now, however, André Deutsch has bought all the rights of my past and future output from his former firm and the original team of Deutsch, Bentley and myself are together again under the imprint of the first named gentleman. We are all twelve years older and Mr Deutsch does not wear shorts any more, or not in the office, at any rate.
‘When are you going to write another How to be an Alien?’ Deutsch and Bentley ask me from time to time and I am sure they mean it kindly.
They cannot quite make out the reply I mutter in answer to their friendly query. It is:
‘Never, if I can help it.’
London, May 1958
I believe, without undue modesty, that I have certain qualifications to write on ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien myself. What is more, I have been an alien all my life. Only during the first twenty-six years of my life I was not aware of this plain fact. I was living in my own country, a country full of aliens, and I noticed nothing particular or irregular about myself; then I came to England, and you can imagine my painful surprise.
Like all great and important discoveries it was a matter of a few seconds. You probably all know from your schooldays how Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation. An apple fell on his head. This incident set him thinking for a minute or two, then he exclaimed joyfully: ‘Of course! The gravitation constant is the acceleration per second that a mass of one gram causes at a distance of one centimetre.’ You were also taught that James Watt one day went into the kitchen where cabbage was cooking and saw the lid of the saucepan rise and fall. ‘Now let me think,’ he murmured – ‘let me think.’ Then he struck his forehead and the steam engine was discovered. It was the same with me, although circumstances were rather different.
It was like this. Some years ago I spent a lot of time with a young lady who was very proud and conscious of being English. Once she asked me – to my great surprise – whether I would marry her. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I will not. My mother would never agree to my marrying a foreigner.’ She looked at me a little surprised and irritated, and retorted: ‘I, a foreigner? What a silly thing to say. I am English. You are the foreigner. And your mother, too.’ I did not give in. ‘In Budapest, too?’ I asked her. ‘Everywhere,’ she declared with determination. ‘Truth does not depend on geography. What is true in England is also true in Hungary and in North Borneo and Venezuela and everywhere.’
I saw that this theory was as irrefutable as it was simple. I was startled and upset. Mainly because of my mother whom I loved and respected. Now, I suddenly learned what she really was.
It was a shame and bad taste to be an alien, and it is no use pretending otherwise. There is no way out of it. A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him. He may become British; he can never become English.
So it is better to reconcile yourself to the sorrowful reality. There are some noble English people who might forgive you. There are some magnanimous souls who realize that it is not your fault, only your misfortune. They will treat you with condescension, understanding and sympathy. They will invite you to their homes. Just as they keep lap-dogs and other pets, they are quite prepared to keep a few foreigners.
The title of this book, How to be an Alien, consequently expresses more than it should. How to be an alien? One should not be an alien at all. There are certain rules, however, which have to be followed if you want to make yourself as acceptable and civilized as you possibly can.
Study these rules, and imitate the English. There can be only one result: if you don’t succeed in imitating them you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous.
I. HOW TO BE A GENERAL ALIEN
A Warning to Beginners
In England* everything is the other way round.
On Sundays on the Continent even the poorest person puts on his best suit, tries to look respectable, and at the same time the life of the country becomes gay and cheerful; in England even the richest peer or motor-manufacturer dresses in some peculiar rags, does not shave, and the country be
comes dull and dreary. On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided – the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull. On the Continent Sunday papers appear on Monday; in England – a country of exotic oddities – they appear on Sunday. On the Continent people use a fork as though a fork were a shovel; in England they turn it upside down and push everything – including peas – on top of it.
On a continental bus approaching a request-stop the conductor rings the bell if he wants his bus to go on without stopping; in England you ring the bell if you want the bus to stop. On the Continent stray cats are judged individually on their merit – some are loved, some are only respected; in England they are universally worshipped as in ancient Egypt. On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.
On the Continent public orators try to learn to speak fluently and smoothly; in England they take a special course in Oxonian stuttering. On the Continent learned persons love to quote Aristotle, Horace, Montaigne and show off their knowledge; in England only uneducated people show off their knowledge, nobody quotes Latin and Greek authors in the course of a conversation, unless he has never read them.
On the Continent almost every nation whether little or great has openly declared at one time or another that it is superior to all other nations; the English fight heroic wars to combat these dangerous ideas without ever mentioning which is really the most superior race in the world. Continental people are sensitive and touchy; the English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour – they are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour. On the Continent the population consists of a small percentage of criminals, a small percentage of honest people and the rest are a vague transition between the two; in England you find a small percentage of criminals and the rest are honest people. On the other hand, people on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.
How to be a brit
HOW TO BE AN ALIEN
Preface to the 24th Impression
I. How to be a General Alien
A Warning to Beginners
Soul and Understatement
A Word on Some Publishers
How Not to be Clever
How to Compromise
How to be a Hypocrite
About Simple Joys
The National Passion
Three Small Points
II. How to be a Particular Alien
A Bloomsbury Intellectual
How to be a Film Producer
Three Games for Bus Drivers
How to Plan a Town
Journalism or the Freedom of the Press
HOW TO BE INIMITABLE
How to be Prosperous
On Trying to Remain Poor
How to be Class Conscious
The New Ruling Class
How to Avoid Travelling
On Wine Snobbery
How to Save the World
In Praise of Television
On the Art of Conversation
How to Stop Road Traffic
How to Take Your Pleasure Sadly
On Not Knowing English
On Not Knowing Foreign Languages
On Not Knowing Anything
On the Decline of Muddle
On Being Unfair
On Minding One’s Own Business
How to Avoid Work
Everybody is Hungarian
HOW TO BE DECADENT
For Some Time There’ll be an England …
On the Elegance of Decay
On How Not to be Reserved
On the National Passion
On Not Complaining
How to Get Lost in London
How to Panic Quietly
On Fiddling Through
The Generation Gap
Is the Economy Really on the Mend?
How to Lose an Empire
How to Become a Colony
On Ceasing to be an Island
A Letter from André Deutsch
HOW TO BE A BRIT
George Mikes was born in 1912 in Siklós, Hungary. He studied law and received his doctorate at Budapest University. He became a journalist and was sent to London as a correspondent to cover the Munich crisis. He came for a fortnight but stayed on and made England his home. During the Second World War he broadcast for the BBC Hungarian Service where he remained until 1951. He continued working as a freelance critic, broadcaster and writer until his death in 1987.
In 1946 he published How to be an Alien, which identified the author as a humourist, although he had not intended the book to be funny. It sold more than 450,000 copies, and with How to be Inimitable and How to be Decadent became How to be a Brit, which has sold more than 90,000 copies.
His other books include Über Alles, Little Cabbages, Shakespeare and Myself, Italy for Beginners, How to Unite Nations, How to Scrape Skies, How to Tango, The Land of the Rising Yen, How to Run a Stately Home (with the Duke of Bedford), Switzerland for Beginners, Tsi-Tsa, English Humour for Beginners, How to be Poor, How to be a Guru and How to be God. He wrote a study of the Hungarian Revolution and is the author of A Study in Infamy, an analysis of the Hungarian secret political police system, Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship and The Riches of the Poor: A Journey round the World Health Organization. On his seventieth birthday, in 1982, he published his autobiography, How to be Seventy.
Nicolas Bentley was born in Highgate in 1907 and educated at University College School, London, and Heatherley School of Art. He was an artist, author, publisher and illustrator of more than sixty books – including works by Hilaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot, Damon Runyon, Lawrence Durrell and many others. He died in 1978.
Back in 1945, when André Deutsch was trying to build up a new publishing firm, he asked me if I had anything for him. I told him that I was fiddling about with some little essays which were linked by a basic idea: how to be an alien. Why I was staying on the Isle of Wight I can no longer remember, but I must have been doing so, or why would he have come there to collect the manuscript?
He enjoyed what he read, but told me that there was not enough of it for a book. So I sat down one afternoon and added five thousand more words. If anyone had said to me that I ought to take more trouble, since forty years later this book would still be selling about thirty thousand copies a year in paperback, not to mention going into a new hardback edition for which I would have to write a preface – well, I would have told that person, gently but firmly, that he or she ought to have his or her head examined. Indeed I would probably have said the same thing if told that I would still be here to write anything in forty years time, and that André would still be around – though disguised as a distinguished old boy – to publish it.
How to be an Alien was a cri de coeur, a desperate cry for help: oh God, look at me, I have fallen among strange people! ‘But it’s such a funny book,’ people say. Perhaps it is. I hope it is. But it’s not unknown for shrieks, moans, whoops and ululations to sound funny to the uninvolved.
In due course I added two further shrieks to that first one: How to be Inimitable in 1960, when we had started to slip but still had an Empire and refused to acknowledge much change; and How to be Decadent in 1977. All three books were illustrated by my great and much-missed friend, Nicolas Bentley.
During all those years since 1945, something rather curious was happening: as I strove to stop being an alien and to become a true Brit, Britain was striving to cast off its peculiar and lofty insularity and become one with the aliens, a part of the Continent (almost), just another member of the E.E.C. It often seems to me that I have failed in my endeavour; but compared with Britain I have succeeded gloriously.
A HANDBOOK FOR BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED PUPILS
‘I have seen much to hate here, much to forgive. But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.’
ALICE DUER MILLER: The White Cliffs
Preface to the 24th Impression
The reception given to this book when it first appeared in the autumn of 1946, was at once a pleasant surprise and a disappointment for me. A surprise, because the reception was so kind; a disappointment for the same reason.
The first part of this statement needs little amplification. Even people who are not closely connected with the publishing trade will be able to realize that it is very nice – I’m sorry, I’d better be a little more English: a not totally unpleasant thing for a completely unknown author to run into three impressions within a few weeks of publication and thereafter into another twenty-one.
What is my grievance, then? It is that this book has completely changed the pictu
re I used to cherish of myself. This was to be a book of defiance. Before its publication I felt myself a man who was going to tell the English where to get off. I had spoken my mind regardless of consequences; I thought I was brave and outspoken and expected either to go unnoticed or to face a storm. But no storm came. I expected the English to be up in arms against me but they patted me on the back; I expected the British nation to rise in wrath but all they said, was: ‘quite amusing’. It was indeed a bitter disappointment.
While the Roumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. ‘We want our friends to see us in this light,’ the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. ‘But it’s not such a favourable light,’ I protested feebly. ‘It’s a very human light and that is the most favourable,’ retorted the official. I was crushed.
A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said:
And threw the book into the fire.
He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another.
Since then I have actually written about a dozen books; but I might as well have never written anything else. I remained the author of How to be an Alien even after I had published a collection of serious essays. Even Mr Somerset Maugham complained about this type of treatment bitterly and repeatedly. Whatever he did, he was told that he would never write another Of Human Bondage; Arnold Bennett in spite of fifty other works remained the author of The Old Wives’ Tale and nothing else; and Mr Robert Graves is just the author of the Claudius books. These authors are much more eminent than I am; but their problem is the same. At the moment I am engaged in writing a 750-page picaresque novel set in ancient Sumeria. It is taking shape nicely and I am going to get the Nobel Prize for it. But it will be of no use: I shall still remain the author of How to be an Alien.
I am not complaining. One’s books start living their independent lives soon enough, just like one’s children. I love this book; it has done almost as much for me as I have done for it. Yet, however loving a parent you may be, it hurts your pride a little if you are only known, acknowledged and accepted as the father of your eldest child.
In 1946 I took this manuscript to André Deutsch, a young man who had just decided to try his luck as a publisher. He used to go, once upon a time, to the same school as my younger brother. I knew him from the old days and it was quite obvious to me even then, in Budapest, when he was only twelve and wore shorts, that he would make an excellent publisher in London if he only had the chance. So I offered my book to him and as, at that time, he could not get manuscripts from better known authors, he accepted it with a sigh. He suggested that Nicolas Bentley should be asked to ‘draw the pictures’. I liked the idea but I said he would turn the suggestion down. Once again I was right: he did turn it down. Eventually, however, he was persuaded to change his mind.
Mr Deutsch was at that time working for a different firm. Four years after the publication of this book, and after the subsequent publication of three other Mikes-Bentley books, he left this firm while I stayed with them and went on working with another popular and able cartoonist, David Langdon. Now, however, André Deutsch has bought all the rights of my past and future output from his former firm and the original team of Deutsch, Bentley and myself are together again under the imprint of the first named gentleman. We are all twelve years older and Mr Deutsch does not wear shorts any more, or not in the office, at any rate.
‘When are you going to write another How to be an Alien?’ Deutsch and Bentley ask me from time to time and I am sure they mean it kindly.
They cannot quite make out the reply I mutter in answer to their friendly query. It is:
‘Never, if I can help it.’
London, May 1958
I believe, without undue modesty, that I have certain qualifications to write on ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien myself. What is more, I have been an alien all my life. Only during the first twenty-six years of my life I was not aware of this plain fact. I was living in my own country, a country full of aliens, and I noticed nothing particular or irregular about myself; then I came to England, and you can imagine my painful surprise.
Like all great and important discoveries it was a matter of a few seconds. You probably all know from your schooldays how Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation. An apple fell on his head. This incident set him thinking for a minute or two, then he exclaimed joyfully: ‘Of course! The gravitation constant is the acceleration per second that a mass of one gram causes at a distance of one centimetre.’ You were also taught that James Watt one day went into the kitchen where cabbage was cooking and saw the lid of the saucepan rise and fall. ‘Now let me think,’ he murmured – ‘let me think.’ Then he struck his forehead and the steam engine was discovered. It was the same with me, although circumstances were rather different.
It was like this. Some years ago I spent a lot of time with a young lady who was very proud and conscious of being English. Once she asked me – to my great surprise – whether I would marry her. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I will not. My mother would never agree to my marrying a foreigner.’ She looked at me a little surprised and irritated, and retorted: ‘I, a foreigner? What a silly thing to say. I am English. You are the foreigner. And your mother, too.’ I did not give in. ‘In Budapest, too?’ I asked her. ‘Everywhere,’ she declared with determination. ‘Truth does not depend on geography. What is true in England is also true in Hungary and in North Borneo and Venezuela and everywhere.’
I saw that this theory was as irrefutable as it was simple. I was startled and upset. Mainly because of my mother whom I loved and respected. Now, I suddenly learned what she really was.
It was a shame and bad taste to be an alien, and it is no use pretending otherwise. There is no way out of it. A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him. He may become British; he can never become English.
So it is better to reconcile yourself to the sorrowful reality. There are some noble English people who might forgive you. There are some magnanimous souls who realize that it is not your fault, only your misfortune. They will treat you with condescension, understanding and sympathy. They will invite you to their homes. Just as they keep lap-dogs and other pets, they are quite prepared to keep a few foreigners.
The title of this book, How to be an Alien, consequently expresses more than it should. How to be an alien? One should not be an alien at all. There are certain rules, however, which have to be followed if you want to make yourself as acceptable and civilized as you possibly can.
Study these rules, and imitate the English. There can be only one result: if you don’t succeed in imitating them you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous.
I. HOW TO BE A GENERAL ALIEN
A Warning to Beginners
In England* everything is the other way round.
On Sundays on the Continent even the poorest person puts on his best suit, tries to look respectable, and at the same time the life of the country becomes gay and cheerful; in England even the richest peer or motor-manufacturer dresses in some peculiar rags, does not shave, and the country be
comes dull and dreary. On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided – the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull. On the Continent Sunday papers appear on Monday; in England – a country of exotic oddities – they appear on Sunday. On the Continent people use a fork as though a fork were a shovel; in England they turn it upside down and push everything – including peas – on top of it.
On a continental bus approaching a request-stop the conductor rings the bell if he wants his bus to go on without stopping; in England you ring the bell if you want the bus to stop. On the Continent stray cats are judged individually on their merit – some are loved, some are only respected; in England they are universally worshipped as in ancient Egypt. On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.
On the Continent public orators try to learn to speak fluently and smoothly; in England they take a special course in Oxonian stuttering. On the Continent learned persons love to quote Aristotle, Horace, Montaigne and show off their knowledge; in England only uneducated people show off their knowledge, nobody quotes Latin and Greek authors in the course of a conversation, unless he has never read them.
On the Continent almost every nation whether little or great has openly declared at one time or another that it is superior to all other nations; the English fight heroic wars to combat these dangerous ideas without ever mentioning which is really the most superior race in the world. Continental people are sensitive and touchy; the English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour – they are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour. On the Continent the population consists of a small percentage of criminals, a small percentage of honest people and the rest are a vague transition between the two; in England you find a small percentage of criminals and the rest are honest people. On the other hand, people on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.
How to Be a Brit
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
George Mikes
George Mikes (pronounced Mik-esh) was a Hungarian-born British author best known for his humorous commentaries on various countries.
Mikes graduated in Budapest in 1933 and started work as a journalist on Reggel («Morning»), a Budapest newspaper. For a short while he wrote a column called Intim Pista for Színházi Élet («Theatre Life»).
In 1938 Mikes became the London correspondent for Reggel and 8 Órao Ujság («8 Hours»). He worked for Reggel until 1940. Having been sent to London to cover the Munich Crisis and expecting to stay for only a couple of weeks, he remained for the rest of his life. In 1946 he became a British Citizen. It is reported that being a Jew from Hungary was a factor in his decision. Mikes wrote in both Hungarian and English: The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, Encounter, Irodalmi Újság, Népszava, the Viennese Hungarian-language Magyar Híradó, and Világ.
From 1939 Mikes worked for the BBC Hungarian section making documentaries, at first as a freelance correspondent and, from 1950, as an employee. From 1975 until his death on 30 August 1987 he worked for the Hungarian section of Szabad Európa Rádió. He was president of the London branch of PEN, and a member of the Garrick Club.
His friends included Arthur Koestler, J. B. Priestley and André Deutsch, who was also his publisher.
His first book (1945) was We Were There To Escape – the true story of a Jugoslav officer about life in prisoner-of-war camps. The Times Literary Supplement praised the book for the humour it showed in parts, which led him to write his most famous book How to be an Alien which in 1946 proved a great success in post-war Britain.
Subsequent books dealt with (among others) Japan (The Land of the Rising Yen), Israel (Milk and Honey, The Prophet Motive), the U.S. (How to Scrape Skies), and the United Nations (How to Unite Nations), Australia (Boomerang), the British again (How to be Inimitable, How to be Decadent), and South America (How to Tango). Other subjects include God (How to be God), his cat (Tsi-Tsa), wealth (How to be Poor) or philosophy (How to be a Guru).
Apart from his commentaries, he wrote humorous fiction (Mortal Passion; The Spy Who Died of Boredom) and contributed to the satirical television series That Was The Week That Was.
His autobiography was called How to be Seventy.
Serious writing included a book about the Hungarian Secret Police and he narrated a BBC television report of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.