If you like me seek insights into and understanding of other nations' fascination (or a lack of it) with Britain you probably took a wrong book. For it only researches feelings of a few representatives of different nations, whose views quite often are at odds with those of the general populace.

One of my diseases ... ( )

Sometimes a writer and thinker, such as Buruma, will discover an angle of inquiry that is truly revelatory--bringing into relief assumptions and influences that might otherwise be overlooked. Buruma starts with his own and his family's love affair with England (German Jewish emigrant grandparents) widens his scope to examine the influence of various political thinkers and intellectuals from France (Voltaire being the #1 french anglophile) Italy (Mazzini) and Germany, particularly the views of German Jews. I didn't know of the German adoption of Shakespeare, through Schlegel's translation as 'theirs' nor did I know that it was Baron de Coubertin's enthusiasm for British public school sportsmanship that inspired the idea of the modern Olympics. It is very difficult to figure out why Great Britain developed its political system and civil liberties the way it did, and how the system has functioned and persisted as well as it has. He makes it clear too that these emigrants and admirers see their own idealized version of Great Britain, that the 'real' Great Britain is a mysterious entity that shouldn't work but does anyway. He also made me feel the mutually beneficial back and forth between the continent and Great Britain. The Europeans have their own take on what makes Great Britain work which in turn has an effect on how the British see themselves which in turn . . . Buruma writes with tremendous insight: "Once people talk of political freedoms as purely native fruits, you know that freedom is no longer the point. Voltaire and Montesquieu recognized that liberties were protected by laws not values. That is why they admired Britain. The idea that society should be ruled by specific national values was in fact that mark of Continental tyrannies, not of British liberalism." I must confess that I wasn't hugely in the mood for this read, but I kept on with it and it really is a fine book. **** ( )