George Mikes - How to Be a Brit

Back in 1945, when AndrDeutsch was trying to build up a new publishing firm, he asked me if I hadanything for him. I told him that I was fiddling about with some little essayswhich were linked by a basic idea: how to be an alien. Why I was staying on theIsle of Wight I can no longer remember, but I must have been doing so, or whywould he have come there to collect the manuscript?

He enjoyed what he read,but told me that there was not enough of it for a book. So I sat down oneafternoon and added five thousand more words. If anyone had said to me that Iought to take more trouble, since forty years later this book would still beselling about thirty thousand copies a year in paperback, not to mention goinginto a new hardback edition for which I would have to write a preface well, Iwould have told that person, gently but firmly, that he or she ought to havehis or her head examined. Indeed I would probably have said the same thing iftold that I would still be here to write anything in forty years time, and thatAndr would still be around though disguised as a distinguished old boy topublish it.

How to be an Alien was a cri de coeur,a desperate cry for help: oh God, look at me, I have fallen among strangepeople! But its such a funny book, people say. Perhaps it is. I hopeit is. But its not unknown for shrieks, moans, whoops and ululations to soundfunny to the uninvolved.

In due course I added twofurther shrieks to that first one: How to be Inimitable in i960, when wehad started to slip but still had an Empire and refused to acknowledge muchchange; and How to be Decadent in 1977. All three books were illustratedby my great and much-missed friend, Nicolas Bentley.

During all those yearssince 1945, something rather curious was happening: as I strove to stop beingan alien and to become a true Brit, Britain was striving to cast off itspeculiar and lofty insularity and become one with the aliens, a part of theContinent (almost), just another member of the E.E.C. It oftens seems to methat I have failed in my endeavour; but compared with Britain I have succeededgloriously.

GEORGE MIKES April 1984