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Features

September 2005

The end of virtuous Albion

by Theodore Dalrymple

Britain Today: Part V
On some British virtues, once commonplace, that are today increasingly hard to find.

My wife, who is French, has lived in England for twenty-five years. When she arrived, she was both surprised and favorably struck by, among other things, the comparative uninterest, even of the rich, in material comfort and pleasures, and by the uprightness and straightforwardness of the public administration. Her subsequent career as a doctor was spent treating old people, and she developed a great respect for the British character as exhibited by her patients. Among their virtues, which visitors to our shores earlier in the century had also noted, were politeness, lack of self-importance, stoicism, fortitude, emotional self-control, and an ironic detachment from their own experience, especially when it was unpleasant. Irrespective of their social class, they had dignity, self-respect, and a fundamental integrity. Their virtues far outweighed their vices.

My medical experience of my older compatriots bears out this impression comple ...

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Theodore Dalrymple is a doctor who works in a British inner city hospital and prison. He has worked in Africa, the Pacific and Latin America. He has published two collections of articles (If Symptoms Persist, and If Symptoms Still Persist), a novel, So Little Done: The Testament of a Serial Killer, and a polemic on the meaning of Health scares, Mass Listeria. He writes for The Spectator in London and many newspapers. He is contributing editor of the City Journal, New York. His articles written for the City Journal have been collected in Life at the Bottom : The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Ivan Dee). He has also recently published The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Health and Health Care (Duckworth, London).


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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 September 2005, on page 29

Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

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