How to be an alien by george mikes

George Mikes: How To Be An Alien

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «George Mikes: How To Be An Alien» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. год выпуска: 1946, категория: Юмористическая проза / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

How To Be An Alien: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «How To Be An Alien»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

George Mikes: другие книги автора

Кто написал How To Be An Alien? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

Возможность размещать книги на на нашем сайте есть у любого зарегистрированного пользователя. Если Ваша книга была опубликована без Вашего на то согласия, пожалуйста, направьте Вашу жалобу на info@libcat.ru или заполните форму обратной связи.

В течение 24 часов мы закроем доступ к нелегально размещенному контенту.

How To Be An Alien — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «How To Be An Alien», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils — By George Mikes 1964.

“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 picture 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 Rumanian 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 ques tionsat 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 Andre 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, Andre 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 ill answer to their friendly query. It is: ‘Never, if I can help it.’

London, May 1958 GEORGE MIKES

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 26 years of my life was I 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 once 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.”

How to be an alien by george mikes

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 picture 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 Rumanian 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 ques tionsat 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 Andre 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, Andre 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 ill answer to their friendly query. It is: ‘Never, if I can help it.’

London, May 1958 GEORGE MIKES

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 26 years of my life was I 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 once 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 is 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.

Читать онлайн «How to Be an Alien»

Автор Джордж Микеш

A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils — By George Mikes 1913.

“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 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 picture 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 Rumanian 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.

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 ques tionsat 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.

How To Be An Alien

«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

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 26 years of my life was I 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.

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 is 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 should who realise that it is not your fault, only your misfortune. They will treat you with condescension, understanding and sympathy. They will invite you into 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 civilised 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.

A Warning To Beginners

In England [1], everything is the other way round.

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.

Many continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.

This is a chapter on how to introduce people to one another.

The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity. It is very important that you should not pronounce anybody’s name in a way that the other party may be able to catch it. Generally speaking, your pronunciation is a sound guarantee for that. On the other hand, if you are introduced to someone there are two important rules to follow.

1. If he stretches out his hand in order to shake yours, you must not accept it. Smile vaguely, and as soon as he gives up hope of shaking you by the hand, you stretch out yours and try to catch his in vain. This game is repeated until the greater part of the afternoon or evening has elapsed. It is extremely likely that this will be the most amusing part of the afternoon or evening, anyway.

2. Once the introduction has been made you have to inquire after the health of your new acquaintance.

Try the thing in your own language. Introduce the persons, let us say, in French and murmur their names. Should they shake hands and ask:

Do not forget, however, that your new friend who makes this touchingly kind enquiry after your state of health does not care in the least whether you are well and kicking or dying of delirium tremens. A dialogue like this:

You: «General state of health fairly satisfactory. Slight insomnia and a rather bad corn on left foot. Blood pressure low, digestion slow but normal.»

— well, such a dialogue would be unforgivable.

In the next phase, you must not say «Please to meet you.» This is one of the very few lies you must never utter because, for some unknown reason, it is considered vulgar. You must not say «Please to meet you,» even if your are definitely disgusted with the man.

A few general remarks:

(a) Do not click your heels, do not bow, leave off gymnastic and choreographic exercises altogether for the moment.

(b) Do not call foreign lawyers, teachers, dentists, commercial travellers and estate agents «Doctor.» Everyone knows that the little word «doctor» only means they are Central Europeans. This is painful enough in itself, you do not need to remind people of it all the time.

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 the type who would discuss the weather with you.» In England this is an ever-interesting, even thrilling topic, and you must be good as discussing the weather.

Learn the above conversation by heart. If you are a bit slow in picking things up, learn at least one conversation, it would do wonderfully for any occasion.

If you do not say anything else for the rest of your life, just repeat this conversation, you still have a fair chance of passing as a remarkably witty man of sharp intellect, keen observation and extremely pleasant manners.

English society is a class society, strictly organised almost on corporative lines. If you doubt this, listen to the weather forecasts. There is always a different weather forecast for farmers. You often hear statements like this on the radio:

«Tomorrow it will be cold, cloudy and foggy; long periods of rain will be interrupted by short periods of showers.»

«Weather forecast for farmers. It will be fair and warm, many hours of sunshine.»

You must not forget that farmers do grand work of national importance and deserve better weather.

I have read an article in one of the Sunday papers and now I can tell you what the situation really is. All troubles are caused by anti-cyclones. (I don’t quite know what anti-cyclones are, but this is not important; I hate cyclones and very anti-cyclone myself.) The two naughtiest anti-cyclones are the Azores and the Polar anti-cyclones.

That again proves that if the British kept to themselves and did not mix with foreign things like Polar and Azores anti-cyclones they would be much better off.

Foreigners have souls; the English haven’t.

On the Continent you find any amount of people who sigh deeply for no conspicuous reason, yearn, suffer and look in the air extremely sadly. This is soul.

All this is very deep: and just soul, nothing else.

The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.

If a continental youth wants to declare his love to a girl, he kneels down, tells her that she is the sweetest, the most charming and ravishing person in the world, that she has something in her, something peculiar and individual which only a few hundred thousand other women have and that he would be unable to live one more minute without her. Often, to give a little more emphasis to the statement, he shoots himself on the spot. This is a normal, week-day declaration of love in the more temperamental continental countries. In England the boy pats his adored one on the back and says softly: «I don’t object to you, you know.» If he is quite mad with passion, he may add: «I rather fancy you, in fact.»

The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink.

So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together, and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it.

There are some occasions when you must not refuse a cup of tea, otherwise you are judged an exotic and barbarous bird without any hope of ever being able to take your place in civilised society.

If you are invited into an English home, at five o’clock in the morning you get a cup of tea. It is either brought in by a heartily smiling hostess or an almost malevolently silent maid. When you are disturbed in your sweetest morning sleep you must not say: «Madame (or Mabel), I think you are a cruel, spiteful and malignant person who deserves to be shot.» On the contrary, you have to declare with your best five o’clock smile: «Thank you so much. I do adore a cup of early morning tea, especially early in the morning.» If they leave you alone with the liquid, you may pour it down the washbasin.

Then you have tea for breakfast; then you have tea at 11 o’clock in the morning; then after lunch; then you have tea for tea; then after supper; and again at 11 o’clock at night.

You must not refuse additional cups of tea under the following circumstances: if it is hot; if it is cold; if you are tired; if anybody thinks you might be tired; if you are nervous; if you are gay; before you go out; if you are out; if you have just returned home; if you feel like it; if you do not feel like it; if you have had no tea for some time; if you have just had a cup.

You definitely must not follow my example. I sleep at five o’clock in the morning; I have coffee for breakfast; I drink innumerable cups of black coffee during the day; I have the most unorthodox and exotic teas even at tea-time.

A Word on Some Publishers

I heard of a distinguished pure-minded English publisher who adapted John Steinbeck’s novel, «The Grapes of Wrath,» so skillfully that it became a charming little family book on grapes and other fruits, with many illustrations.

On the other hand, a continental publisher in London had a French political book, «The Popular Front,» translated into English. It became an exciting, pornographic book called «The Popular Behind.»

When I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I’d been here an hour I realised that I did not understand one word. In the first week I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually bur thoroughly that I would never know it really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another five hundred and yet another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard before, and nobody else either.

If you live here long enough you will find out to your great amazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective that the language possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you do not need to learn any other adjectives. You can say the weather is nice, a restaurant is nice, Mr. Soandso is nice, Mrs. Soandso’s clothes are nice, you had a nice time, and all this will be very nice.

Then you have to decide on your accent. You will have your foreign accent, all right, but many people like to mix it with something else. I knew a Polish Jew who had a strong Yiddish-Irish accent. People found it fascinating though slightly exaggerated. The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with the question: «isn’t it?» People will not understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most excellent impression.

I have known quite a number of foreigners who tried hard to acquire an Oxford accent. The advantage of this is that you give the impression of being permanently in the company of Oxfords dons and lecturers on mediaeval numismatics; the disadvantage is that the permanent singing is rather a strain on your throat and that it is a type of affectation that even many English people find hard to keep up incessantly. You may fall out of it, speak naturally, and then where are you?

The Mayfair accent can be highly recommended, too. The advantages of Mayfair English are that it unites the affected air of the Oxford accent with the uncultured flavour of a half-educated professional hotel-dancer.

The most successful attempts, however, to put on a highly cultured air have been made on the polysyllabic lines. Many foreigners who have learnt Latin and Greek in school discover with amazement and satisfaction that the English language has absorbed a huge amount of ancient latin and Greek expressions, and they realise that (a) it is much easier to learn these expressions than the much simpler English words; (b) that these words as a rule are interminably long and make a simply superb impression when talking to the greengrocer, the porter and the insurance agent.

Imagine, for instance, that the porter of the block of flats where you live remarks sharply that you must not put your dustbin out in front of your door before 7:30 a.m. Should you answer «please don’t bully me,» a loud and tiresome argument may follow, and certainly the porter will be proved right, because you are sure to find a clause in your contract (small print, bottom of last page) that the porter is always right and you owe absolute allegiance and unconditional obedience to him. Should you answer, however, with these words: «I repudiate your petulant expostulations,» the argument will be closed at once, the porter will be proud of having such a highly cultured man in the block, and from that day onwards you may, if you please, get up at four o’clock in the morning and hang your dustbin out the window.

When you know all the long words it is advisable to start learning some of the short ones too.

You should be careful when using these endless words. An acquaintance of mine once was fortunate enough to discover the most impressive word notalgia for back-ache. Mistakenly, however, he declared in a large company:

«I have such a nostalgia.»
«Oh, you want to go home to Nizhne-Novgorod?» asked his most sympathetic hostess.
«Not at all,» he answered. «I just cannot sit down.»

How Not to be Clever

«You foreigners are so clever,» said a lady to me some years ago. First, thinking of the great amount of foreign idiots and half-wits I had had the honour of meeting, I considered this remark exaggerated but complimentary.

Since then I have learnt that it was far from it. These few words expressed the lady’s contempt and slight disgust for foreigners.

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 it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.

A continental gentleman seeing a nice panorama may remark:

This pompous, showing-off way of speaking is not permissible in England. The Englishman looking at the same view would remain silent for two or three hours and think about how to put his profound feelings into words. The he would remark:

An English professor of mathematics would say to his maid checking up the shopping list:

«I’m no good at arithmetic, I’m afraid. Please correct me, Jane, if I am wrong, but I believe the square root of 97344 is 312.»

And about knowledge. An English girl, of course, would be able to learn just a little more about, say, geography. But it is just not «chic» to know whether Budapest is the capital of Roumania, Hungary of Bulgaria. And if she happens to know that Budapest is the capital of Roumania, she should at least be perplexed if Bucharest is mentioned suddenly.

How to be Rude

It is easy to be rude on the Continent. You just shout and call people names of a zoological character.

On a slightly higher level you may invent a few stories against your opponents. In Budapest, for instance, when a rather unpleasant-looking actress joined a nudist club, her younger and prettier colleagues spread the story that she had been accepted only under the condition that she wear a fig-leaf on her face. Or in the same city there was a painter of limited abilities who was a most successful card-player. A colleague of his remarked once: «What a spendthrift! All the money he makes on industrious gambling at night, he spends on his painting during the day.»

In England rudeness has quite a different technique. If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark «You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that.» In England you just say «Oh, is that so?» Or «That’s rather an unusual story, isn’t it?»

When some years ago, knowing ten words of English and using them all wrong, I applied for a translator’s job, my would-be employer (or would-not-be employer) softly remarked: «I am afraid your English is somewhat unorthodox.» This translated into any continental language would mean: Employer (to the commisionaire): «Jean, kick this gentleman down the steps!»

In the last century, when a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut off without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared: «We are not amused»; and the whole British nation even now, a century later, is immensely proud of how rude their Queen was.

It is true that quite often you can hear remarks like: «You’d better see that you get out of here!» Or «Shut your big mouth!» Or «Dirty pig!» etc. These remarks are very un-English and are the results of foreign influence. (Dating back, however, to the era of the Danish invasion.)

How to Compromise

Wise compromise is one of the basic principles and virtues of the British.

The genius for compromise has another aspect, too. It has a tendency to unite together everything which is bad. English club life, for instance, unites the liabilities of social life with the boredom of solitude. An average English house combines all the curses of civilisation with the vicissitudes of life in the open. It is all right to have windows, but you must not have double windows because double windows would indeed stop the wind from blowing right into the room, and, after all, you must be fair and give the wind a chance. It is all right to have central heating in an English home, except in the bath room, because that is the only place where you are naked and wet at the same time, and you must give British germs a fair chance. The open fire is an accepted, indeed a traditional institution. You sit in front of it and your face is hot whilst your back is cold. It is a fair compromise between two extremes and settles the problem of how to burn and catch cold at the same time. The fact that you may have a drink at five to six is an extremely wise compromise between two things (I do not quite know between what, certainly not between prohibition and licentiousness), achieving the great aim that nobody can get drunk between three o’clock and six o’clock in the afternoon unless he wants to and drinks at home.

English spelling is a compromise between documentary expressions and an elaborate code-system; spending three hours in a queue in front of a cinema is a compromise between entertainment and asceticism; the English weather is a fair compromise between rain and fog; to employ an English charwoman is a compromise between having a dirty house or cleaning it yourself; Yorkshire pudding is a compromise between a pudding and the county of Yorkshire.

The Labour party is a fair compromise between Socialism and Bureaucracy; the Beveridge Plan is a fair compromise between being and not being a Socialist at the same time; the Liberal Party is a fair compromise between the Beveridge Plan and Toryism; the Independent Labour Party is a fair compromise between Independent Labour and a political party; the Tory-reformers are a fair compromise between revolutionary conservatism and retrograde progress; and the whole British political life is a huge and non-compromising fight between compromising Conservatives and compromising Socialists.

How to be a Hypocrite

If you want to be really and truly British, you must become a hypocrite.

Now: how to be a hypocrite?

As some people say that an example explains things better than the best theory, let me try this way.

I had a drink with an English friend of mine in a pub. We were sitting on the high chairs in front of the counter when a flying bomb exploded about a hundred yards away. I was truly and honestly frightened, and when a few seconds later I looked around, I could not see my friend anywhere. At last I noticed he was lying on the floor, flat as a pancake. When he realised that nothing particular had happened in the pub he go up a little embarrassed, flicked the dust off his suit, and turned to me with a superior and sarcastic smile.

«Good Heavens! Were you so frightened that you couldn’t move?»

About Simple Joys

It is important that you should learn how to enjoy simple joys, because that is extremely English. All serious Englishmen play darts and cricket and many other games; a famous English statesman was reported to be catching butterflies in the interval between giving up two European states to the Germans; there was even some misunderstanding with the French because they considered the habit of English soldiers of singing and playing football and hide and seek and blind man’s bluff slightly childish.

Dull and pompous foreigners are unable to understand why ex-cabinet ministers get together and sing «Daisy, Daisy» in choir; why serious business men play with toy locomotives while their children learn trigonometry in the adjoining room; why High Court judges collect rare birds when rare birds are rare and they cannot collect many in any case; why it is the ambition of grown-up persons to push a little ball into a small hole; why a great politician who saved England and made history is called a «jolly good fellow.»

They cannot grasp why people sing when alone and yet sit silent and dumb for hours on end in their clubs, not uttering a word for months in the most distinguished company, and pay twenty guineas a year for the privilege.

The National Passion

Queueing is the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race. The English are rather shy about it, and deny that they adore it.

On the Continent, if people are waiting at a bus-stop they loiter around in a seemingly vague fashion. When the bus arrives, they make a dash for it; most of them leave by the bus and a lucky minority is taken away by an elegant black ambulance car. An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.

The biggest and most attractive advertisements in from of cinemas tell people: Queue here for 4/6; Queue here for 9/3; Queue here for 16/8 (inclusive of tax). Those cinemas which do not put out these queueing signs do not do good business at all.

At week-ends an Englishman queues up at the bus-stop, travels out to Richmond, queues up for a boat, then queues up for tea, then queues up for ice-cream, the joins a few more odd queues just for the sake of the fun of it, then queues up at the bus-stop and has the time of his life.

Many English families spend lovely evenings at home just by queueing up for a few hours, and the parents are very sad when the children leave them and queue up for going to bed.

Three Small Points

If you go out for a walk with a friend, don’t say a word for hours; if you go out for a walk with your dog, keep chatting to him.

There is a three-chamber legislation in England. A bill to become law has to be passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords and finally approved by the Brains Trust.

A fishmonger is the man who mongs fish; the ironmonger and the warmonger do the same with iron and war. They just mong them.

A Bloomsbury Intellectual

They all hate uniforms so much that they all wear a special uniform of their own: brown velvet trousers, canary yellow pullover, green jacket with sky-blue checks.

This suit of clothes has to be chosen with the utmost care and is intended to prove that its wearer does not care for suits and other petty, worldly things.

A walking stick, too, is often carried by the slightly dandified right-wing of the clan.

A golden chain around the ankle, purple velvet shoes and a half-wild angora cat on the shoulders are strongly recommended as they much increase the appearance of arresting casualness.

It is extremely important that the B.I. should always wear a three-days beard, as shaving is a contemptible bourgeois habit. (The extremist left-wing holds the same view concerning washing, too.) First one will find it a little trying to shave one’s four-day beard in such a way that, after shaving, a three days old beard should be left on the cheeks, but practice and devoted care will bring their fruits.

As to your own literary activities, your poems, dramas and great novels may lie at the bottom of your drawer in manuscript form. But it is important that you should publish a few literary reviews, scolding and disparaging everything and everybody on earth from a very superior and high-brow point of view, quoting Sir Thomas Wyatt and anything in French and letting the reader feel what you would be able to do if you could only find a publisher.

Politically you must belong to the extreme left. You must, however, bear a few things in mind:

(b) Do not belong to any party, because that would be «regimentation.» Whatever different parties achieve, it is much more interesting to criticise everyone than to belong to the herd.

(c) Do not hesitate to scorn Soviet Russia as reactionary and imperialistic, the British Labour Party as a conglomeration of elderly Trade Union Blimps, the French Socialists as «confused people,» the other Western Socialist parties as meek, bourgeois clubs, the American labour movements as being in the pay of big business; and call all republicans, communists, anarchists and nihilists «backward reactionary crypto-fascists.»

Finally, remember the main point. Always be original! It is not as difficult as it sounds: you just have to copy the habits and sayings of a few thousand other B.I.s.

Mayfair Playboy

Fix the little word de in front of your name. It has a remarkable attraction. I knew a certain Leo Rosenberg from Graz who called himself Leo de Rosenberg and was a huge success in Deanery Mews as a Tyrolean nobleman.

In the old days the man who had no money was not considered a gentleman. In the era of an enlightened Mayfair this attitude has changed. A gentleman may have money or may sponge on his friends; the criterion of a gentleman is that however poor he may be he still refuses to do useful work.

How to be a Film Producer

A little foreign blood is very advantageous, almost essential, to become a really great British film producer.

Forget these misleading examples because it is obvious that Shakespeare could not possibly have had any film technique, and recent research has proved that he did not even have an eight-seater saloon car with his own uniformed chauffeur.

English film directors follow a different and quite original line. They have discovered somehow that the majority of the public does not consist, after all, of idiots, and that an intelligent film is not necessarily foredoomed to failure. It was a tremendous risk to make experiments based on this assumption, but it has proved worth while.

Driving Cars

It is about the same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To change a punctured tyre in the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure outside London as outside Rio de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start up a cold motor with the handle in Moscow than in Manchester; the roughly 50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same in Sydney and Edinburgh.

The police are perfectly right. After all, cars have been built to run, and run fast, so they should not stop.

This healthy philosophy of the police has been seriously challenged by a certain group of motorists who maintain that cars have been built to park and not to move. These people drive out to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their windows and go to sleep. They do not get a spot of air; they are miserably uncomfortable; they have nightmares, and the who procedure is called «spending a lovely afternoon in the open.»

Three Games for Bus Drivers

How to Plan a Town

Britain, far from being a «decadent democracy,» is a Spartan country. This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate peoples of the world.

Mediaeval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates, hair-shirts and nail-carpets.

Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build and English town.

You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may continue the numbering in a side-street; you may also give the same number to two or three houses.

With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the two sides have different names.

Civil Servant

There is a world of difference between the English Civil Servant and the continental.

(If you want to catch me out and ask who are then the people who fill the continental lunatic asylums, I can give you the explanation: they are all Civil Servants who know the ways and means of dealing with officials and succeed in getting in somehow.)

If a former continental Civil Servant thought that this martial behaviour would be accepted by the British public he would be badly mistaken. The English Civil Servant considers himself no soldier but a glorified businessman. He is smooth and courteous; he smiles in a superior way; he is agreeable and obliging.

The British Civil Servant, unlike the rough bully we often find on the Continent, is the Obedient Civil Servant of the public. Before the war, an alien in this country was ordered to leave. He asked for extension of his staying permit, but was refused. He stayed on all the same, and after a while he received the following letter (I quote from memory):

The Under-Secretary of State presents his compliments and regrets that he is unable to reconsider your case, and begs to inform you that unless you kindly leave this country within 24 hours you will be forcibly expelled.

Your Obedient Servant,

On the Continent rich and influential people, or those who have friends, cousins, brothers-in-law, tenants, business associates, etc., in an office may have their requests fulfilled. In England there is not such corruption and your obedient servant just will not do a thing whoever you may be. And this is the real beauty of a democracy.

Journalism, or the Freedom of the Press

There was some trouble with the Burburuk tribe in the Pacific Island, Charamak. A party of ten English and two American soldiers, under the command of Capt. R. L. A. T. W. Tilbury, raided the island and took 217 revolutionary, native troublemakers prisoner and wrecked two large oil-dumps. The party remained ashore an hour-and-a-half and returned to their base camp without loss to themselves.

How to report this event? It depends on which newspaper you work for.

. It would be exceedingly perilous to overestimate the significance of the raid, but it can be fairly proclaimed that it would be even more dangerous to underestimate it. The success of the raid clearly proves that the native defences are not invulnerable; it would be fallacious and deceptive, however, to conclude that the defences are vulnerable. The number of revolutionaries captured cannot be safely stated, but it seems likely that the number is well over 216 but well under 218.

You jump to your feet and ask this question:

You: Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware that people in this country are puzzled and worried by the fact that Charamak was raided and not Ragamak?

The Right Hon Member: I have nothing to add to my statement given on the 2nd August, 1892.

The most interesting feature of the Charamak raid is the fact that Reggie Tilbury is the fifth son of the Earl of Bayswater. He was an Oxford Blue, a first-class cricketer and quite good at polo. When I talked to his wife (Lady Clarisse, the daughter of Lord Elasson) at Claridges to-day, she wore a black suit and a tiny block hat with a yellow feather in it. She said: «Reggie was always very much interested in warfare.» Later she remarked: «It was clever of him, wasn’t it?»

You may write a letter to the editor of «The Times»:

You may read this answer on the following day:

If you are the London correspondent of the American paper

simply cable this:

If you are tired of not being provided by nature, not being physically existing and being miraculous and conventional at the same time, apply for British citizenship. Roughly speaking, there are two possibilities: it will be granted to you, or not.

In the first case you must reorganise and revise your attitude to life. You must pretend that you are everything you are not and you must look down upon everything you are.

In this aspect, though, certain caution is advisable. I know a na’turalised Britisher who, talking to a young man, repeatedly used the phrase «We Englishmen.» The young man looked at him, took his pipe out of his mouth and remarked softly: «Sorry, Sir, I’m a Welshman,» turned his back on him and walked away.

The same gentleman was listening to a conversation. It was mentioned that the Japanese had claimed to have shot down 22 planes.

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils

(Penguin Readers: Level 3)

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Be the first to ask a question about How to Be an Alien

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

This is affectionate mockery of British (really, middle and upper class London) life, observed by a Hungarian who’d been living here for eight years before publishing this in 1946. It’s illustrated by Nicholas Bentley (whose father invented the Clerihew, a form of comic verse). The first half comprises short pieces about being a “general alien”; the second part looks at specific types of (male) Brits, including Bloomsbury intellectual, playboy, and civil servant.

Image: «The national passion. A This is affectionate mockery of British (really, middle and upper class London) life, observed by a Hungarian who’d been living here for eight years before publishing this in 1946. It’s illustrated by Nicholas Bentley (whose father invented the Clerihew, a form of comic verse). The first half comprises short pieces about being a “general alien”; the second part looks at specific types of (male) Brits, including Bloomsbury intellectual, playboy, and civil servant.

Image: «The national passion. An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.»

Oxymoronic Wildean observations

“In England everything is the other way round.”
The richest people have the scruffiest and most peculiar dress; Brits rarely lie, but would not dream of telling you the truth; introductions are a way to conceal a person’s identity, and while bargaining is bad and Continental, compromise is British and therefore good. For example:
“It is all right to have central heating in an English home, except in the bath room, because that is the only place where you are naked and wet at the same time, and you must give British germs a fair chance.”
And you must discuss the weather, but never contradict anyone about it. There’s even sample dialogue to practice!

Image: “The weather. This is the most important topic in the land.”

My favourite piece was the section on towns “designed for inconvenience and to confuse foreigners”: inconsistent house-numbering; houses with names instead of numbers; over 60 synonyms for “street”; lots of variants in close proximity (Belsize Park/Road/Green); the exact same name in different areas of the same town (dozens of Warwick Avenues, none of them near Warwick); street names printed on big signs but put too high, low, or in shadow to see them, and roads that have different names on opposite sides because they back onto different squares (diagram included!).

• “It’s bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently.”

• “The Labour Party is a fair compromise between Socialism and Bureaucracy.”

• “On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.”

Image: «The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.»

Joking about national stereotypes

I read this book alongside Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, which is an excellent, serious, and up-to-date book about black British history and structural racism in the UK today (see my review HERE).

The combination made me very conscious that this is humour rooted in caricatures of difference. As it’s a minority person making jokes about the majority, that’s fine, as when people make jokes about their own groups:

Me: What do you call a blonde who flies a plane?
Someone else: I don’t know. What do you call a blonde who flies a plane?
Me: A pilot, you sexist pig!

But there was a personal cost, despite his wit. He highlights the word “naturalised”, and says:
“Before you obtain British citizenship, they simply doubt that you are provided by nature.”
And after being granted it:
“You must pretend that you are everything you are not and you must look down upon everything you are.”
Note “are”, not even “were”.

Nevertheless, the book is more amusing than I’m making it sound!

Image: English tea is horrible, but you will always be offered it and must never refuse it, not even “if it is hot; if it is cold; if you are tired; if anybody thinks that you might be tired… if you have just had a cup.”

The start of something

George Mikes came to England in 1938 as the London correspondent for two Hungarian newspapers, switched to working for the BBC, and stayed. He discovered that he’d been an alien all his life (as all non Brits are), that he didn’t really understand the nuances of the language that he spoke fluently, and that there was no escape:
“He may become British; he can never become English”.

The title is poignant because Mikes was interned on the Isle of Man as an “enemy alien” in 1940. This was his first satirical collection, and it contrarily claims to be:
“For xenophobes and anglophobes… Specially recommended to all supplicants for naturalisation”.

If it feels a little unoriginal, that’s only because it’s been copied so often since, including by Mikes himself. After this in 1946, he wrote How to be Inimitable in 1960, How to be Decadent in 1977, and all three were combined into How to be a Brit in 1986.

“Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers.
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country;
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country,
and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.”

When some years ago, knowing ten words of English and using them all wrong, I applied for a translator’s job, my would be employer (or would-be-not-employer) softly remarked: ‘I afraid your English is somewhat unorthodox.’ This translated into any continental language would mean: EMPLOYER (to the commissionaire): ‘Jean, kick this gentleman down the steps!’

The Hungarian George Mikes wrote this brief introduction to living in the UK shortly after WWII. While not entirely au courant it does, un

When some years ago, knowing ten words of English and using them all wrong, I applied for a translator’s job, my would be employer (or would-be-not-employer) softly remarked: ‘I afraid your English is somewhat unorthodox.’ This translated into any continental language would mean: EMPLOYER (to the commissionaire): ‘Jean, kick this gentleman down the steps!’

The Hungarian George Mikes wrote this brief introduction to living in the UK shortly after WWII. While not entirely au courant it does, unlike many a guide to life in the UK, provide you with helpful advice about what to do if you become a bus driver or what to say if you get elected to the House of Commons.

There is an anecdote in this book that I have often thought about. When Mikes was a young man, he worked for a while as a clerk at a lawyer’s office in Budapest. One morning, he assisted in a large property transaction. Things were not done electronically in those days, and the seller had come in with a roll of a dozen or so title deeds done up with a rubber band. He took off the rubber band and spread them out on the table, while the buyer carefully read through each one before handing over a c There is an anecdote in this book that I have often thought about. When Mikes was a young man, he worked for a while as a clerk at a lawyer’s office in Budapest. One morning, he assisted in a large property transaction. Things were not done electronically in those days, and the seller had come in with a roll of a dozen or so title deeds done up with a rubber band. He took off the rubber band and spread them out on the table, while the buyer carefully read through each one before handing over a check for the equivalent of several million dollars. When they were finished, they shook hands on the deal. The buyer started getting ready to leave, and suddenly asked:

«Could I have the rubber band please? It’s a bit hard to keep everything together.»

«Of course!» said the seller. «That’ll be another ten cents.»
____________________________
[Update, Mar 20 2018]

Need I say more?

Need I say more?

You can draw a straight line from this through Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island to the Very British Problems phenomenon. Mikes (that’s “mee-kesh” – he was Hungarian) made humorous observations that have, in general, aged well. The mini-essays on tea, weather, and queuing struck me as particularly apt. I’d heard this line before, though I can’t remember where: “An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”

Other favorite lines:

“It is all right to have central heating i You can draw a straight line from this through Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island to the Very British Problems phenomenon. Mikes (that’s “mee-kesh” – he was Hungarian) made humorous observations that have, in general, aged well. The mini-essays on tea, weather, and queuing struck me as particularly apt. I’d heard this line before, though I can’t remember where: “An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”

Other favorite lines:

“It is all right to have central heating in an English home, except the bath room, because that is the only place where you are naked and wet at the same time, and you must give British germs a fair chance.” [this reminds me of when my mother made her first trip to England in 2004 to visit me during my study abroad year; in her family newsletter reporting on the experience, one of her key observations was, “British bathrooms are antiquated.” My husband and I still quote this to each other regularly.]

“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 and inside out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication abut the names of the streets.”

A surprise Christmas gift from parents who have long experienced my incessant complaining about living in England as a foreign citizen, How to Be an Alien is a guidebook for how to survive in this strange, grey country, and most importantly, how to understand the minds of the otherwise incomprehensible English people.

Everything is certainly a bit exaggerated, but on nearly every page, I couldn’t help but be amused at how shockingly accurate the descriptions remain. A surprise Christmas gift from parents who have long experienced my incessant complaining about living in England as a foreign citizen, How to Be an Alien is a guidebook for how to survive in this strange, grey country, and most importantly, how to understand the minds of the otherwise incomprehensible English people.

George Mikes was an alien. He wrote the book in 1946 to show the British how he felt about them. He is funny, rude and mocks them as often as possible. But somehow, though he didn’t intend the book to be amusing, the English people read it and thought it was funny.

Many continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.
***

On the Continent, if people are waiting at a bus-stop they loiter around in a seemi George Mikes was an alien. He wrote the book in 1946 to show the British how he felt about them. He is funny, rude and mocks them as often as possible. But somehow, though he didn’t intend the book to be amusing, the English people read it and thought it was funny.

Many continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.
***

On the Continent, if people are waiting at a bus-stop they loiter around in a seemingly vague fashion. When the bus arrives, they make a dash for it; most of them leave by the bus and a lucky minority is taken away by an elegant black ambulance car. An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
***

It is easy to be rude on the Continent. You just shout and call people names of a zoological character.
In England rudeness has quite a different technique. If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark «You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that.» In England you just say «Oh, is that so?» Or «That’s rather an unusual story, isn’t it?»
***

In the last century, when a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut off without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared: «We are not amused»; and the whole British nation even now, a century later, is immensely proud of how rude their Queen was.
***

This pompous, showing-off way of speaking is not permissible in England. The Englishman looking at the same view would remain silent for two or three hours and think about how to put his profound feelings into words. The he would remark:
«It’s pretty, isn’t it?»
***

The verb to naturalise clearly proves what the british think of you. Before you are admitted to British citizenship you are not even considered a natural human being [. ] Note that before you obtain British citizenship, they simply doubt you are provided by nature.

If naturalised, remember these rules: