Word: brits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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HARDWARE. A junk sculpture turns into a ravening home wrecker in this spiky Brit sci-fi parable. First-time filmmaker Richard Stanley has an eye for the macabre and a mind full of undigested ideas. Oh, well, next time . . . This time he has made an arresting exercise in horror on the cheap...
Hitchens has a wonderful eye for zany manifestations of Brit kitsch. In 1890, for example, some idealistic Shakespeareans decided to release in New York City's Central Park every bird mentioned by the bard -- more than 50 species in all -- that was not already native to the region. Instead of filling the city's air with the song of larks and nightingales, the experiment introduced to America the common European starling, a dirty, prolific pest that soon ousted New York's native bluebirds from their nesting places. If there is a moral here, Hitchens refrains from drawing...
...best way to deal with a foreigner, any old-school Brit will tell you, is to shout at the blighter in English until he catches on. If he professes not to understand, just turn up the volume till he does. A man who doesn't speak English is a man who isn't worth speaking to. Robert Byron, the great traveler of the '30s who wrote so feelingly on Islamic culture, got great comic effect by treating every alien he met -- even an American -- as an unintelligible buffoon; and his John Bullish contemporary Evelyn Waugh all but enunciated a Blimp...
...Sociology and Social Studies--have, I think it is fair to say, much enjoyed teaching those courses in social theory that the department considers compulsory for its incoming graduate students. (One term in a four-year period was taught by someone else--Dr. Geoffrey Hawthorn of Cambridge University, another Brit., and adistinguished exegist at that!) There is room for Sociology and for Social Studies, and I hope that the links between the two areas can be strengthened: Differently put, there is nothing wrong with Sociology, just with some pronouncements recently made in its name...
...Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone: 1932-1940 by William Manchester (1988). Although not as long or crammed as Martin Gilbert's official eight-volume life of Winnie, Volume II of Manchester's opus takes the irrepressible Brit through the gathering storm to the first thunderclaps of World War II and demonstrates that the author is one of today's best writers of narrative prose...