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Why do we Britons still genuflect before age-old class caricatures? | Nick Cohen

Elocution classes are enjoying a revival, and the aristocratic ‘swell’ remains a winning type. We need to grow up

In a time of British decline, acting is one of the few world-beating skills we have left. From high to low, we are masters at raiding the dressing-up box and putting on a show. Pieces on why British actors succeed in Hollywood have become a staple of the entertainment press for good reason.

The prosaic answers credit their training in character acting and their relative cheapness. The best look at our love of pretence. We have a monarchy that pretends it is happy and glorious while we pretend to believe it; a House of Lords that pretends to be noble while its seats are on open sale; and adversarial political and legal systems, whose participants pretend to oppose one another, while they privately agree. The British sense of humour tends towards the absurdist and the ironic, styles that reject realism. Above all, as the theatre director Richard Eyre observed, the British make exemplary actors because “role-playing [is] second nature to a nation obsessed with class distinction and inured to the necessity of pretending to be what you aren’t”.

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