British Misery

Brits are glad to be grumpy, but the Americans are not amused

"First they said they didn’t understand it. Now they say we don’t have it any more. The British sense of humour, supposedly one of our defining national characteristics, is once again lost on the Americans.

It is particularly lost in Slough, the town so derided by John Betjeman. According to a book by an American observer, it has become the capital of the emerging British disease - misery.

Eric Weiner, a former New York Times journalist, spent a year travelling the world in search of the planet’s happy places. But after visiting Britain he felt only pity for a population unable to experience happiness. In The Geography of Bliss, he writes: “I feel sorry for the Brits; they don’t merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.”"