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September 12, 2008
Invasion of the hedgehog people
New York Times correspondent Sarah Lyall explores the differences between Americans and Brits with great humor and insight in her new book, “The Anglo Files” (W.W. Norton).
As Lyall reports in her introduction, she moved to England in the mid-1990s “for love” - the writer met future husband Robert McCrum at the Frankfurt Book Fair while she was covering the publishing beat out of the Times Manhattan offices.
“Robert was like something out of ‘Brideshead Revisited,’ or at least that’s what I thought, not knowing very many British people and not yet having read a lot of Evelyn Waugh,” Lyall confides.
“I could barely understand half of what he said, but I was hooked by his charismatic arrogance, glinting brown eyes, and expert way around the English language. For his part, he liked my raw New World enthusiasm and the fact that I was cedulous enough to believe pretty much anything he told me about the UK,” she adds.
After Lyall married McCrum, moved to London, and had two daughters, she was able to dig deeper into the differences between people in this country and those who live “across the pond.”
The writer’s clout as a reporter for The New York Times enabled her to investigate whatever Brit peculiarities interested her. The result is a breezy and very funny examination of British politics, newspapers, show business and ,of course, the special role played by the Royal Family in the UK.
Chapter 10 — “The Invasion of the Hedgehog People” — delves into the Brits “sentimerntal attachment to animals, including abstract ones featured in newspapers.”
“Every British animal has its cheerleaders. The country has so many badger-support groups that it was deemed necessary to create an umbrella organization, the National Federation of Badger Groups, now known as the Badger Trust, to coordinate all the disparate badger-related activity,” Lyall writes.
The lowly badger is beloved in the UK thanks to the great children’s book author Beatrix Potter, who made one of the creatures the protagonist of “The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.”
“The Anglo Files” is a pointed, and sometimes viciously satirical, attempt to give readers “A Field Guide to the British.”
Posted by Joe on September 12, 2008 4:55 PM
