Books in Brief: The English

The English, by David Frost and Anthony Jay (Stein & Day, $5.95). This is, I regret to say, a relentlessly clever book. The authors have a number of good and important points to make about the ill effects of the democratization of Great Britain— substitution of quantity for quality in education, the growing and increasingly irrelevant bureaucracy, the replacement of the white man’s burden with the white man’s fear—along with some of the remaining ill effects of the old aristocratic beliefs. But they have chosen to make these points in a style which verges on (and sometimes descends into) television slapstick. Also—one other point—they have chosen to conclude what (aside from the style) is a generally intelligent and perceptive book with a routine, not to say stereotyped, attack on the British military system and the whole idea of empire (“guerrilla forces today launched a series of attacks on government bases” necessarily means “Democrats are trying to overthrow our fascist puppet”), thereby showing that they, like our own antiwar groups, have wearied not so much of the white man’s burden, as of the burdens of freedom. Which is too bad.

JL

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J. C. Lobdell

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The English, by David Frost and Anthony Jay (Stein & Day, $5.95). This is, I regret to say, a relentlessly clever book. The authors have a number of good and important points to make about the ill effects of the democratization of Great Britain— substitution of quantity for quality in education, the growing and increasingly irrelevant bureaucracy, the replacement of the white man’s burden with the white man’s fear—along with some of the remaining ill effects of the old aristocratic beliefs. But they have chosen to make these points in a style which verges on (and sometimes descends into) television slapstick. Also—one other point—they have chosen to conclude what (aside from the style) is a generally intelligent and perceptive book with a routine, not to say stereotyped, attack on the British military system and the whole idea of empire (“guerrilla forces today launched a series of attacks on government bases” necessarily means “Democrats are trying to overthrow our fascist puppet”), thereby showing that they, like our own antiwar groups, have wearied not so much of the white man’s burden, as of the burdens of freedom. Which is too bad.