A central plank of the British character is a fascination with the British character – if the Americans speak of their traits with pride, and the French with nonchalance, we speak of ourselves as amateur naturalists might discourse on a favourite beetle: amused, affectionate, alive to detail.
It is British to talk about the weather but also to talk about ourselves talking about the weather. How much of “classically British” literature involves an inventory of our quirks and habits, as if for future anthropologists? It might be a human tendency to assume your foibles are universal, but our bias runs the other way: we prefer to think of ourselves as eccentric, an island of outliers.
