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One not entirely serious reason why my generation might have voted Brexit

Katrina Robinson • May 22, 2019

Seventies sitcom 'Mind Your Language'

At the time 'Mind Your Language' seemed an hilarious idea: a TV sitcom set in a College of FE ‘Spoken English class’ with a classful of new arrivals from other shores wanting to improve their language skills. Or as my slightly more aware schoolteacher put it, ‘How to insult every other nation under the sun in one half-hour programme.’

All the 1970s stereotypes were there: serious and humourless Germans, good time Mediterraneans, supposedly dim Spanish waiters who dared to offend your Britishness by speaking their own language more fluently than they did English, beautiful but over-sexed French, and of course their wise and kindly English teacher, like the District Commissioner of some British colony trying to instil civilisation into childlike natives. And in another uncanny reflection of the British Empire it was presided over by the Queen Victoria-like figure of Miss Courtney, the stern and matriarchal college principal.

As a child I found it funny, but the truth is this was seriously how many English people of my parents’ generation saw mainland Europeans, and if for some reason you didn't expand your horizons over the years, their attitude could infect you. Many of the generation that arose out of WW2 and the years following saw the Germans as clever and earnest (but not to be trusted), the French as stylish and sexy (but not to be trusted), and pretty much the rest of Europe as peopled by funny little incompetents, who had needed saving from Nazism by the clearly superior British, conveniently forgetting the dominant role of the American and Russian superpowers in the conflict.

Looking back it seems as though a proportion of British people were at best less than quarter-hearted about Europe if it meant they had to change and modernise, and why should they, when recent history already proved they were better anyway?

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P2YL | 20. The power of pep-talks

by Katrina Robinson • 11 May, 2024

When I found myself divorced and alone in midlife, I felt scared. Somehow I would have to rebuild my feminine confidence, find a way to earn more money, learn to socialise and date again. Reading my diaries from back then I see I had to give myself pretty regular pep-talks as I was frequently dragged down by disappointment and set-backs. The first pep-talk was inspired by the British Royal Family. ‘The Reluctant King’ I heard the audio play Crown Matrimonial about George VI, grandfather of the present King Charles. George VI was the awkward younger brother of the suave and popular Edward VIII, and was called on to face the task of kingship because Edward VIII decided to abdicate. ‘Bertie’ (as George VI was known in his family) was a chronically shy man with a speech impediment who felt appalled at the future facing him. It’s on record he broke down and sobbed in front of his mother, Queen Mary, at the thought of becoming king: ‘I c-c-c-can’t do it. I c-c-c-can’t even speak properly.’