A Quote by David Starkey
The argument that there was a social pathology of the English Reformation, that there were fundamental changes in English society and the English church which made the Reformation inevitable, is academically stone dead.
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English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.
A lot of the demos I write are all in English, so releasing music in English isn't translating to English, it's just keeping them in English.
My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English.
English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent.
Not long time ago there was a striking example of the extent to which English has diverged: a television company put out a programme filmed in the English city of Newcastle, where the local variety of English is famously divergent and difficult, and the televised version was accompanied by English subtitles!
My fitness trainer's English, my physio's English, some of my friends are English. I don't have a problem with English people at all.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation.
Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.
In the 19th century, the English were loathed. Every memoir that you read of that period, indicates the loathing that everybody felt for the English, the only difference between the English and Americans, in this respect, is the English rather liked being loathed and the Americans apparently dislike it intensely.
My father was English. He date-raped my mother so she's hated English men ever since. You know my boyfriend's English, and I'm, uh, I'm half-English, which she's never been real happy about. If she finds out I'm dating someone English, she'll ah, think I' turning my back on her and becoming a foreigner.' Cathy, that's the stupidest reason I've ever heard.
I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.
The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly.
James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world.
The English, the English, The English are best: So Up with the English and Down with the Rest!
Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have worked out if my books had been translated into English sooner, because English is the language that's spoken worldwide, and when a book appears in English it is made universal, it becomes a global publication.
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