Nice to see London correspondent Sarah Lyall’s latest dispatch on the British has made the New York Times most emailed list. This week Lyall (who has a new book out) focuses on the British love of spending one or two weeks each summer in a small European resort downing lager and cheap shots before throwing up all over the street. Or worse.
As Gawker points out, it’s Lyall’s tenth British booze story in the past eight years—not a bad record considering alcohol-fueled sex, violence and vandalism is a perennial topic in the UK press.
The question is always, why us? How come the French seem able to sip wine sensibly with every meal and the Germans to chink glasses merrily in beer halls across Bavaria? Even the Russians, who die in their thousands from alcoholism and cheap vodka, don’t feel compelled to run around city centers on a Saturday night trying to ram their tongues (or fists) down the nearest person’s throat.
Scotsman Alex Massie has some interesting thoughts:
It is true that other countries do not behave like this. Perhaps they have adapted to modernity better than Britons. But if one takes a longer or broader look at the matter then one realises that this sort of boorish drunkeness has been the norm, not the exception in British history. There were reasons beyond a desire for control and the pleasures of tut-tutting disapproval for the rise of the temperance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Fun fact: Winston Churchill was kicked out of the House of Commons in 1922 when he lost his Dundee seat to Neddy Scrymgeour of the Scottish Prohibition Party. Second fun, or surprising fact: whole areas of Glasgow, such as Cathcart, remained dry until as recently as the 1970s).
One need only think of Hogarth’s etchings warning of the pernicious social consequences of drink or, a century later, of Cruikshank’s cartoons such as “The Bottle” or “The Worship of Bacchus” to remember that booze has been a, perhaps the, major social issue in Britain for at least the past quarter of a millenium. Of course, Hogarth championed Beer Street as a sweet and healthy alternative to the sozzled excess of Gin Lane but then again, beer was generally healthier than water in those days.
Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe (NYT)
From Gin Lane to Faliraki (Alex Massie)
Among other reasons I put it down to two points.
First one being life is to stressful in the UK in order to avoid the stress of life the British resort to drinking.
Secondly, the irresponsible way alcohol is easily availability is the other reason.
I will be honest to you that I love the drinking and at times used alcohol to avoid my problems.
Yeah, but life here in NYC is pretty stressful - and this kind of behavior is not as tolerated. I don’t think that Americans drink less, but are just not ad big dicks about it. My English wife and her family think that it is some sort of class thing, which I don’t get
Pat
It has nothing to do with class; I do a part time job pub in Putney where you will find middle class to Upper class drinking extremely. But one thing I will defend the middle class and Upper class don’t behave the way the lower class would do.
Ta