Chapter V.

The Four Horsemen of British Pride

I. Great Britain: The People’s Republic of Tea

The Queen holds no power, the Prime Minister has no clue, the kitchen has no flavor, and the weather has no mercy.
But everything is “very interesting,” because it’s said with an accent that makes even a fart sound like an Oxford report. And yet, right here, in this tasteless soup with the Queen on the packet, something was born that went on to colonize half the world.

II. An Empire on Credit from the Past

For centuries, the English smacked people across six continents, and now they’re surprised nobody wants to play cricket with them. An empire built on opium, slavery, and steel today fed to children in textbooks as “We brought civilization.” Classic move: first you get punched in the face and lose your house, then you get a brochure on etiquette.

And if you think nothing can top this story, just look at afternoon tea, a ritual of colonial denial.

III. Tea & Hypocrisy

Every nation has its rituals. The English have milk tea and colonialism with denial. If something went wrong, the French are to blame. If it went well, Albion was first. And if the Poles cracked Enigma? “Ah yes, we had some help”, and back to brewing history their own way.

But if you tell someone you have Shakespeare, you never have to explain the rest.

IV. Shakespeare: The Literary Smokescreen

When you hear, “We gave the world Shakespeare,” you’re not supposed to ask why potatoes were a culinary terror for 300 years. But yes, they gave us Shakespeare. And baked beans for breakfast. Thank you, Sir, for poetry and heartburn.

And if that were the end, maybe we’d even forgive them, but the Brit still has one more trick, screwing you over with a smile.

V. The Fine Art of Elegant Screwing with a Smile

An Englishman won’t rob you outright. He’ll “invite you to a partnership, with full respect for your independence,” and you end up without your wallet, without your plantation, and with a new name in your passport. Soft power: a crowbar in a cashmere glove, and a toast to your health.

But even in the thickest bamboozle, you can get lost, which is why they invented Brexit.

VI. Brexit: How to Screw Yourself Over, British-Style

After decades of messing with others’ heads, the English did it to themselves. They left the EU to become Great Britain again forgetting that version ended somewhere near Suez with a dead lion on the flag. Now they can hand out brochures about being an island on the periphery to themselves.

And in the end, as befits the empire of fiction and absurdity—there’s the monarchy.

VII. The Monarchy: Disney for Conservatives

The Queen isn’t an institution. She’s a national screensaver, a conscience sleep mode. The royal family, a reality show pretending to be a documentary on morality. Everyone cheats, drinks, claps at funerals, and serves no real function. But if they vanished? National mourning, because no one knows who to send a Christmas card to.

That’s a country where the main export is stories. And every joke about themselves is just the appetizer for the main course: “Long live Albion, for the rest of the world has already finished dinner.”

Witnesses:

Sworn to maintain outstanding British restraint—and no one lasted a minute.
If you’re allergic to distance and self-mockery, do yourself a favor, look away now.

đŸȘ“ George Orwell

“An Englishman is a creature who deeply hates foreigners, the poor, and change, but will do anything to make it look polite.”
“Their freedom is just the right to choose between two varieties of falsehood.”
“This nation did not survive on virtue, it survived by being able to explain away evil with tea.”

🍖 Jonathan Swift

“The Brits are a people who value order above morality, as long as they don’t have to look in the mirror.”
“For them, hunger is a statistical problem, and death, a clerical error in the export ledger.”
“They prefer to kill elegantly from the town hall roof than soil their hands talking to the poor.”

🐖 Irvine Welsh

“An Englishman is a fucking class boil, he feeds on humiliation and calls it a system.”
“This country lives in the illusion that if someone wears a suit and says ‘pardon,’ they’re not a bastard.”
“Whatever goes wrong here, blame Scotland, Ireland, or a woman.”

🐍 Martin Amis

“England is paradise for people who feel nothing, but are great at pretending to suffer.”
“A nation built on irony and emotional repression, an emotional Gulag, just with better PR.”
“Their national pride is a scarf stitched from colonial corpses and football hooligan longing for the monarchy.”

🧠 Will Self

“Britain is a grotesque museum, where a person ruined by classism masturbates daily before the mirror of history.”
“Their language is a tool for dodging. Their smile a blade.”
“This is a country where awareness is a minority, and the rest is gin, ice, and denial.”

đŸŽ© Alan Bennett

“You know an Englishman by the fact he never says what he thinks. Or even that he thinks.”
“Their morality ends where shame begins. And they know that place well, they built it for generations.”
“Their whole life is a well-played silence.”

đŸŽ€ Stewart Lee

“Britain is a country where people cry over a dog in an ad, yet vote for the party that cuts child benefits.”
“The English laugh as a way to not hear the truth.”
“They’re proud of things they never did, and ashamed of things they’ll never hear about.”

đŸ§· Shakespeare (summoned by the spirit of narrative)

“How foul the land where the crown sits upon one who sold his soul for manners.”
“Betrayal in this land has velvet words and a steely intent.”
“England is an island where conscience drowns in rain.”

This is England, dissected by her own sons and ghosts.
Even they couldn’t decide if there’s anything to like but at least they don’t have to pretend it doesn’t stink anymore.

List of non-Albion writers who didn’t bother with subtlety:

🧹 Jean-Paul Sartre (France)

“Colonialism is not an accident of history. It is a policy.” He despised both British (and French) imperialism. For Sartre, the English were smiling administrators of exploitation, civilizers for show, diploma-wielding thieves.

🌋 Frantz Fanon (Martinique/Algeria)

In “The Wretched of the Earth,” he described the empire as a mental illness. Fanon saw the British as pioneers of polite cultural rape, those who bow, then take your language, land, and sense of self.

🇼🇳 Arundhati Roy (India)

“The British Empire did not end. It merely changed shape.” For her, Britain is a freedom simulator: talks democracy, hides plunder.

🧕 Edward Said (Palestine/USA)

Author of “Orientalism.” Not only did he detest the British way of speaking about “others,” he proved the whole imperial narrative is a false frame, where the white Brit is always master of the world, even with a battered top hat.

đŸ‡ŠđŸ‡· Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)

In “An Argentine Writer and Tradition,” he winks: “We don’t need to imitate European forms, least of all British. We have our own.” To him, the English were too self-absorbed to understand anyone else.

🩁 NgĆ©gÄ© wa Thiong’o (Kenya)

Gave up writing in English, calling it a tool of oppression. British education? Training to be a “good subject.” “They took our language so we’d forget who we are.”

From philosophers to poets, Brit-bashing was international and fully justified. This is England, pulled out of its own closets, opened to all voices and stripped to the bone. An island that built an empire on other people’s labor, then sold the world a narrative of its own uniqueness. A nation that privatized even its own shame, handing it out in rations, along with a pamphlet on punctuality.

Strip away the accent from the mask, the ash from the wig, the marble from the marketing, what’s left is just a sense of superiority in a chipped teacup. And loneliness on an island the world knows better than the English themselves.

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