Word: britishized
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Britain is a small island, with an elite whose members all seem to know each other. Proof, if needed, came at a recent London performance of Gethsemane, David Hare's new play about rot in British politics. The audience was silver-haired and well-heeled. On some seats lay coats by Hare's fashion-designer wife, Nicole Farhi. And sitting in the audience was Lord Levy, a prominent Labour Party fund raiser who is Jewish and made his millions in pop music. Levy is widely seen as the model for the play's Otto Fallon, a Labour Party fund raiser...
...Keeping it Real After around 35 years as British theater's keenest observer of power, you'd think Hare, 61, would be used to the critical parlor games his work inspires. There's a long-standing ritual among theatergoers of playing connect-the-dots between public figures and Hare's versions of them. Some would say that's exactly the kind of reaction the playwright should expect - even aim for. "If you want to write about subjects that are based on historical events, and you want people to be challenged, to look at these events in a different light...
...real thing. His hard stares at Britain's institutions - the Church of England in Racing Demon, the tabloid press in Pravda - are so well-researched that his critics have sniffed that he's a better journalist than playwright. Before the opening night of Pravda, a 1985 collaboration with provocative British playwright Howard Brenton about a Rupert Murdoch-like press baron, the show's producers were so nervous about the similarities that they consulted a libel lawyer. In Obedience, Struggle and Revolt, a 2005 collection of his lectures, Hare recalls the lawyer's response: "Your play portrays a megalomaniac psychopath...
George Orwell called it a mainstay of civilization; William Gladstone praised its revitalizing powers. But to Henrietta Lovell, founder of London's Rare Tea Company, the traditional British cuppa is overrated. "People in the U.K. are used to drinking really cheap, industrially produced tea," she says...
...passion for a superior sip. "In China, businesspeople would show off by buying a $120 pot of tea at lunch," she says. "I'd never tasted anything like it." Made from leaves grown and processed on small mountain gardens, those exquisite infusions were far removed from the bland British teabag - which can contain leaves from up to 60 factory farms. "I realized that Britain was drinking the equivalent of blended whiskey," recalls Lovell. "We'd never tried the single malt of the tea world...