Sorry! The English and Their Manners

Purchased in a charity shop whim, this fascinating and engrossing exploration adds to the large canon of existing literature on what constitutes ‘English’ culture and behaviour. Hitchings draws on classic sources from Orwell to Kate Fox, but also substantially enlarges upon them. As the title of the work suggests, manners is Hitchings’ core focus area, and he takes the reader on a historical journey in this respect, traversing Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval and then Victorian England, as well as contrasting British and American attitudes. Geography and genealogy (of words) also play a pivotal role in Hitchings’ discourse. Overall, Sorry! is meticulously researched and Hitchings is almost effortlessly erudite. Necessarily, however, with such a complex subject, it is hard to coalesce everything into a succinct conclusion. Hitchings is right to note that the ‘correct’ modes of behaviour continue to change; now, they are all the more challenging to implement, owing to multiple (especially electronic) modes of communication. Hitchings adopts the stance of Pinker — and I concur — that it is easy to criticise the way of the world, but slow progress is usually being made, even if it is not always noticed. N/R.

By Henry Hitchings