Politics

• Few mourn US embassy relocation — “Now all is set to change, as the embassy prepares to shut up shop in central London and move to a brand-new building – in somewhat less salubrious surroundings on the south bank of the river Thames.” (BBC News)
• Do WAGS make good role models? – “Lizzie Cundy, the wife of former Chelsea Player Jason Cundy, and Caroline Jordan, headmistress of St George’s school in Ascot, discuss whether WAGs make good role models for schoolgirls.” (BBC News)
• Britain’s lonely high flier — “A resurgent Rolls-Royce has become the most powerful symbol of British manufacturing. Its success may be hard to replicate, especially in difficult times.” An exceptionally interesting article. (The Economist)
• Old time ads — “Nostalgic commercials and brands are being revived as advertisers seek to tap into recession-ridden Britons’ urge for security, predictability and reassurance.” Interesting slide show of some classic British ad campaigns. (Financial Times)
• She’s married to one of the country’s sexiest actors – so why does Emma Thompson think British men are retarded? — “The Oscar-winning actress compares her husband to a clam because he’s so hopeless at opening up — like all his ‘emotionally autistic’ countrymen.” If I had to pick a celebrity to be my friend, I’d pick Emma. (The Daily Mail)
• Blagojevich, the Iambic Anglophile — “Impeached, indicted and feeling alone, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich has found some unlikely friends: Dead British poets.” May I suggest a little Robert Browning? “I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.” (the New York Times)
• Kate’s no lady in waiting — A video from CBS’s Early Show about Kate Middleton’s 27th birthday and will Will or won’t Will pop the question soon?

The British press worked overtime this weekend, reporting on images of Prince Edward supposedly beating his dogs with a stick during a pheasant shoot. There aren’t any pictures of the prince’s stick making contact with the dogs — it looks as if he’s trying to break up a fight — but animal rights groups think his menacing behavior with the raised stick is indicative of the cruelty behind country sports.

There’s a deep schism in British society about country sports, a favorite pastime of the aristocracy in Britain. Fox hunting, for example, was banned in England and Wales in 2004, thanks to public uproar and lobbying from animal rights groups. Now with fox hunting banned, what’s a royal to do but take aim at game birds on the estate?

The royals do love their weekend hunts. The late Princess Diana, not a hunter, was reportedly dismayed by her sons’ love of the hunt; Prince William’s girlfriend, Kate Middleton, was roundly criticized by the press and animal rights groups for shooting with Prince Charles last year. Also last year, scandal-magnet Prince Harry was accused of shooting two birds that were of a protected species.

I’m not anti-hunting. I grew up in rural northern New England, where hunting’s not a rich man’s sport. It wasn’t uncommon to go to a relative’s home and be served a steaming bowl of venison stew or braised rabbit, the meat courtesy of an uncle’s hunting expedition. Responsible hunting kept animal populations in check and filled our freezers with food. (I’ll admit though, I’m not a huge fan of venison.) I assume that the royal estates, too, are filled with deer that reproduce like, well, rabbits, and stalking keeps their populations controlled.

But the royal family doesn’t need to fill their freezers with protein for the winter, and given the strong anti-monarchist sentiment in Britain coupled with an economy in the shitter, is it the wisest move for these folks to engage in a weekend sport that pisses off the public who are supporting them? Is this their brilliant alternative to stumbling out of Whisky Mist at 2:00 a.m.? What do you think? Add your comments below.

I arrived around 7:30 a.m. at Heathrow with very little sleep, thanks to the woman behind me who coughed the entire flight and when she wasn’t coughing, kicked my seat. But I grit my teeth and bore it, for I knew when the plane landed, I’d be in Anglophile Heaven a/k/a London.

We had a funny, loquacious driver who whisked us to our hotel, the InterContinental Park Lane, in no time flat, even though many of the streets in central London were closed off to traffic. That’s because today was the Queen’s Speech at the opening of Parliament; she traditionally travels by carriage, attended by her horse guards, which we got a quick glimpse of before they headed off to Buckingham Palace (and, by the way, I can see from my hotel room window!) on their way to the houses of Parliament.

So after a casual breakfast where we met our other travel companions, we took a short siesta, then headed off for a light lunch and spa treatment. I got a massage, which I sorely needed — my right shoulder is in knots. I figured after this, I’d fall on face with exhaustion, but it actually revived me, and I headed off for a long walk down Piccadilly, where I did some shopping at Fortnum & Mason and Waterstones, before doing some holiday window gazing in the Burlington Arcade, and more shopping on Regent Street. Now I’m back in my hotel room, getting ready for dinner (Theo Randall! Very excited!!) and then an early bedtime.

Ok, some general comments:

* I’m pretty sure I saw Judy Dench walking outside our hotel this afternoon. (ETA: confirmed by hotel manager that she, along with Nigella Lawson, were here today for some charity event.) And one of our travel companions told us Ralph Fiennes had drinks at the bar downstairs last time she was here. I’m a married woman and all, but boy did that bit of gossip/news set my pulse on fire.

* Twice today I was mistaken for a Brit, once by a British Red Cross volunteer, who looked really surprised when I said, “I’d love to sign your petition but I’m an American” and added, “But I’m flattered you took me for a native.” She laughed and said, “You *do* look like a native.” (I left my fanny pack and baseball cap at home. Shucks.) The other was a Brit asking me how to find some shop around Saville Row. He apologized for bothering me when I told him I was a tourist.

*Oh yes, the apologies. It’s so hard getting used to saying “sorry” for “excuse me.”

*People speak so quietly here — and it’s a blessed relief. The stores are quiet, even when they’re packed. I don’t even mind people who walk while talking on their mobiles because you can’t hear them. The only thing is, I’m constantly saying, “Sorry?” to hotel staff and people; I tend to stand farther away as I expect to have my ears blasted off.

Dinner at Theo Randall was lovely. I can’t go into too much detail — need to save it for work — but afterwards he came out to say hello afterwards. I had smoked eel for a starter, then a pasta with shaved white truffles for my main. My favorite dishes were in dessert (of course) — a pannacotta rich with vanilla, and my most favorite, a refreshing clementine sorbet. I could have eaten a couple bowls of it alone.

Tomorrow I’ll take some pics. We’re supposed to get a bit of snow on Thursday, which should be interesting.

Thanks to an article in this weekend’s Los Angeles Times, I just learned that the U.S. Embassy is leaving its digs in London’s posh Grosvenor Square (one of my favorite Grateful Dead lines: “As I was walking around Grosvenor Square/not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air”) for a more secure compound to be built on the other side of the Thames.

The wrong side, according to some.

The article provides an interesting look at the rivalry between the tony north and the down-and-out south, a rivalry I was only slightly aware of. Due to my bizarre interest in epidemiology as a kid, I knew the southern side of the river was where plague victims were carted off to be buried, but I didn’t know that a cultural and social divide exists today. It sort of reminds me of that friendly rivalry between residents of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and now Brooklyn, like south London, is this hipster cool place to live.

As the article points out, the view from the new American embassy will be hard to beat — but leaving all those years of history at Grosvenor Square is sad.

This piece about Obama’s reception from world leaders from today’s Times online just showed up in my feed reader, and it looks like our future president isn’t much of an Anglophile. The quotes at the end of the story, from his autobiography Dreams From My Father, don’t exactly flatter the British.

I’m am so, so curious how the first meeting between the new president and the British government will go, mostly because whenever I saw Bush and Blair giving joint news conferences (or heard them speaking through microphones they thought were turned off), I wanted to climb under a table, stick my fingers in my ears, and hope no one else in the world was hearing it either. Now that Bush will be out in January, I give you Exhibit A, above, for your viewing and listening pleasure.

This was my favorite front page of all the newspapers I’ve seen from around the world today. It’s just perfect.

I might admire nearly everything English, but the truth of the matter is that I love being an American. Today I can actually be proud of it. (And tomorrow, I promise, I’ll get back to waxing rhapsodic about the British. Today I’m just going to be a happy Yank.)

Sorry I’ve been quiet — I’ve been preoccupied with the U.S. elections over the last week. I just checked out the BBC’s main news page, and it’s quite something to see this election get so much play abroad.

I’ll be glad when it’s over, to be honest. It has been nonstop mudslinging for the last few months and I’m hoping when tomorrow arrives, it’ll all be over and we can move on.

If you’re reading this from abroad — are you paying attention to the election? What do you think? Add your comments below. With any luck, in the next few days I’ll have my head screwed back on straight and will start blogging again.

I read about Sarah Lyall’s The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British on Bethanne Patrick’s Book Maven blog a few weeks ago, and immediately knew I had to read this book. The night I purchased it, I brought it to bed to read. Within a few minutes, I was laughing so hard my son begged to know what was so funny. I couldn’t explain it to him, as it involved a joke about hemorrhoids and the British penchant for euphemism.

Some background on Lyall: she’s a reporter for The New York Times who was sent to London in the 90s to report on the British. (Nice job, eh?) While there, she met then married an Englishman, so she has something of a unique perspective on British/American relations.

Lyall’s a fine writer with a good eye for detail; it’s clear she’s done her reporting for this book (hanging out at Parliament, running around London with a man who wears gold lamé underpants) and she does a terrific job weaving threads of history, literature, and politics into her stories. Another thing I liked about the Anglo Files is that Lyall doesn’t fall into that trap of disparaging her American roots or making fun of those quaint British folks in their queues — likewise, she doesn’t pit one culture against the other culture. This is much a book about the British view of the world as it is what it means to be an American standing in the midst of that world.

There were chapters in this book that made it worth the price of admission, such as one about Brits and their attitudes toward sex, and another at the end of the book, an analysis of the British stiff upper lip and if it’s going soft (to wit: the mass outpouring of emotion after Princess Diana’s death). I also loved the chapter about the reform of the House of Lords. If you’re fascinated with the British class system and how it works, then there’s a lot in this book that’ll scratch your itch. There’s even a discussion of why Brits love to use the C word.

Other chapters I skimmed or skipped altogether, such as the one about cricket. If cricket is boring to watch, which is Lyall’s initial claim, it’s even more boring to read about. The book is loaded with footnotes, too. I’ve noticed some reviewers complain they’re too distracting, but I thought they added a lighthearted touch.

The Anglo Files is a book I highly recommend to other Anglophiles.

Hat tip to a tweet from Kathy at Parenttalktoday.com .