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he admitted that the King's Head and Eight Bells on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, was after all not so bad. His qualification, however, was that he goes there only in the spring when he can sit and sip his beet quietly outside on the pavement in the open air. Invariably we got back on the subject of food. It seemed to me that the one area I had not been exposed to was "typical English food." On the site of what used to be a Hungarian restaurant, there now stands The Hunting Lodge, and the menu placed bfeore me included Yarmouth bloaters, steak and kidney pie, jugged hare, grilled kidneys and a delightful melange called bacon, egg and anchovie tart.
Talking to him on the set of [[italics]] A Shot in the Dark [[/italics]], his latest movie, he insisted that I see what certainly must be one of the most well-known tourist spots in the world, Trafalgar Square. Here, Henry Iving augustly surveys his perpetual domain, which can best be described as a wonderful potage of politics mixed with starlings.
Before leaving, there was just time for me to see his latest art acquistion, a modern abstract painting by Walter Nessler. Sellers frequents the Hampstead New End Gallery where Nessler exhibits.
Finally, we were at the airport, and I said to him, "Peter, with all you've shown me and all you've told me, I

[[image: two photographs]]

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feel as though I've just got part of the picture. Do you think that you would feel so strongly about London if you had been born somewhere else?"
"Of course," he replied without hesitation.
"The answer," he said, "is that when the weather here is the most ghastly, and the fog the deepest, and the wind the most biting, and the inside of the house not much warmer than the outside, and glowing letters arrive from newly emmigrated relatives in America and Italy and Africa, and when the table fare at night is somewhat meager, and even when the whole world seems about ready to go to pot, this is when the Londoner's eyes will be the brightest and his grip the surest and his smile the heartiest. He may not come out and say so, but out of his centuries of tradition, the one thing he is always sure of is that he is free, and knowing this, he has no reason ever to be anything but a complete optimist - always. And if you think for a moment, a threat to his freedom is about the only thing that ever got him riled up over the last few centuries. That's about the best reason I know to be a Londoner."
As he finished talking, I noticed that the clouds were a little deeper, and that the day was beginning to darken considerably. I looked around at the people near us and sure enough, the Bobby was beginning to smile, the BOAC stewardess was almost gushing as she invited me aboard, and with the onrush of the poorer weather, it seemed to me that even Peter Sellers had straightened his shoulders a little bit and was being revitalized before my very eyes. I hurriedly clapsed his hand and rushed for the boarding ramp, content with the thought that soon the severest storm of the year would be upon us and all London would be resounding with optimistic laughter

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England:
[[image: painting of William Shakespeare]]
the land of Shakespeare?
by Malcolm Muggeridge

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Shortly after the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, the then Regius Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in an access of patriotism valiantly proclaimed: "Shakespeare shall never be theirs!" He was referring, of course, to the Germans, who had produced some of the longest, most turgid and excruciatingly boring works even in the field of Shakespearean criticism. Whether the Professor expected an enemy landing-party to take off the folios, the famous bust, and perhaps kidnap him, we shall never know. Like other occupants of his distinguished Chair, he has been totally forgotten.
In any case, his boast was made good. Shakespeare remained, and remains, outs, despite numerous take-over bids from different parts of the world. We English may have lost our Empire, but we still have our Bard.
This is the more remarkable in that everything possible is done to make him distasteful to us. He is taught in our schools in a manner which, if applied to "The Memoirs of a Woman

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of Pleasure" would make Fanny Hill unpopular among the senior boys. Children are induced to toil through his plays with a view to preparing themselves to spot contexts and engage in other examinational imbecilities.
Then actors! The moment they get into doublet and host, and feel themselves within sight of playing Hamlet, their voices take on a kind of neighing, groaning tone, as standardized in tis way as an Anglican clergyman's "dearly beloved brethren." Some of our contemporary maestros are decidedly illustrative of Shakespeare's own views on actors and acting:
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as

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Malcolm Muggeridge, who has ascended from the editorship of Punch to the role of international iconoclast, is known on both sides of the Atlantic as Britian's most amusing critic.

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