It is strange to be a Nordic anglophile, trying: one's own society is so much better organized, so much more fair. And the image of England one has, of liberal, of literary England is rather unreal. The actual reality is Völkischer Beobacht..., sorry, Daily Mail and the plutocratic tory sadism and corruption. And so it has been rather too much of the time. The extended family where always the worst people are in control. Still, still: there is always the other side too, the decency and reason, reasonableness, gentleness. The place invented liberalism, had Shakespeare, first broke away from the brutal, primitive shackles of pre-modernity. A very strange country. (And not talking of Britain here, Wales and Scotland are something else, very different.)
