McCartney Times

TeaFlix Tuesday with Dr. Angie & Ruth McCartney

Today on TEAFLIX, we’re having a special “authors’ reading” of the ladies’ brand new book “Becoming British for Beginners: A Perplexing Preponderance of Peculiar Patrimony and Provenance” available now autographed on pre-order (just in time for the holidays) at https://mrsmccartneysteas.com/…/becoming-british-for…

Becoming British for Beginners is an essential survival guide for anyone who has ever wondered why the British apologise when somebody else steps on their foot, regard queuing as a sacred constitutional duty, and can turn the words “That’s rather interesting” into a declaration of outright war.

This is not a sensible textbook. Sensible textbooks are written by committees, approved by subcommittees and eventually placed on a shelf in a municipal building where nobody will ever be troubled by them again.

Instead, this book offers an affectionate, mischievous and occasionally bewildered tour through the customs, language, history and magnificent peculiarities of Britain. Within these pages, the unsuspecting reader will encounter baffling place names whose pronunciations bear only a passing acquaintance with their spelling, elaborate titles requiring several minor aristocrats and a diagram, ancient flags stitched together through conquest, compromise and an alarming amount of heraldry, and expressions that appear friendly until delivered by a tight-lipped woman called Felicity.

Discover why Cholmondeley is pronounced “Chumley,” why Milngavie is “Mull-guy,” and why the residents of Wrotham, Meopham, Trottiscliffe and Kirkcudbright have apparently entered into a conspiracy against the alphabet.

Learn the delicate British art of the long-winded insult: a form of verbal combat in which the victim may not realise he has been attacked until three days later, while buttering a crumpet. Explore theatrical superstitions, wedding speeches, peculiar celebrations, curious sayings, traditional courtesies and the many unspoken rules governing tea, weather, trousers, public embarrassment and the correct distance at which to stand from a stranger at a bus stop.

Along the way, you will meet kings, queens, dukes, earls, lords, ladies, best men, badly behaved villagers, confused visitors and several people who should never have been placed in charge of a flagpole.

Whether you are planning a trip to Britain, attempting to understand a British relative, preparing to marry into the species, or simply wish to know why an entire nation can discuss drizzle for forty-five minutes, “Becoming British for Beginners” will provide absolutely everything you need.

Except, possibly, an umbrella.

Part cultural guide, part comic history and part emergency phrasebook for the terminally un-British, this book celebrates a country that has spent centuries developing rules nobody will explain, traditions nobody can remember starting and place names nobody is prepared to pronounce properly.

Read it carefully. There may be a test.

There probably won’t be, of course.

But it is considered polite to worry.

Teaflix is sponsored by https://MrsMcCartneysTeas.com

Pre-order the book at

https://mrsmccartneysteas.com/…/becoming-british-for…