..and that England shall be charming:
To be more specific, in my case, it is old British films. I like old American films too, but a little of them goes a long way; and old French films are even better, but they represent an exoticism that goes beyond mere comfort. However, put me in front of a television with a black-and-white British film made at any point between about 1935 and 1960, and I am in heaven.
The England I love is not the England I live in; the England I love is in old films. I am sure it was an era of bad food, lower life expectancy, the reek of tobacco and what we would now call illiberalism, but I love it. I feel instinctively at home there. I understand the tones of voice. I understand the understatement. I understand the double-breasted suits, the pints of mild and bitter, the half-crowns and 10-bob notes, the trilbies, the cars with running boards and double declutching; and I can even suspend disbelief when the actors playing policemen all sound like Old Etonians of the period.
As indeed all policemen should sound.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSimon Heffer, born in 1960, may be justly drawn to the era immediately before he was born, but I don't think such a fascination is universal. I, born a mere 18 years later in 1978, generally regard the time immediately before my birth, the 1970s and late 1960s, as having been more repulsive than our current era in some ways. I save my nostalgia for the time before my only living grandparent was born...before World War I!
ReplyDelete