Queenan Country

In this hilarious romp through England, one of America's pre-eminent humourists seeks the answer to an eternal question: what makes the Brits tick?

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One semi-tropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan’s English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken tikka masala in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression, coupled with the dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain. Freed from the obligation to visit an unending procession of Auntie Margarets and Cousin Robins, as he had done for the first twenty-five years of his marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the Limey heart of darkness.

His trip was not in vain. Crisscrossing Old Blighty like Cromwell hunting Papists, Queenan finally came to terms with the choochiness, squiffiness, ponciness and sticky-wicketness that lie at the heart of the British character. Here he is trying to find out whose idea it was to impale King Edward II on a red-hot poker – and what this says about English sexual politics. Here he is enjoying a tour of Liverpool given by Big Jim, a cab driver whose best man was John Lennon. And here he is in Stroud, impressed by Talon, an all-Brit Eagles tribute band fresh from the Cheese and Grain in Frome. At the end of his epic adventure, the author returns chastened, none the wiser, but encouraged that his wife is actually as sane as she is, in light of her fellow countrymen.