“Objectively, class differences in accent, dress, manners, and general style of life are very much smaller; and one cannot, strolling about the street or travelling on a train, instantly identify a person's social background as one can in England. Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness, or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant.” PersonsSocialNaturalDifferencesClassAirStreetsStyleDrugEnglandRelationDressesTrainStoresBackgroundsMannersDriversAccentsAssistantsStrollingCabSnobberyDeferenceHostessesSocial RelationsCab DriversBarmenClass Differences Author:Anthony Crosland
“All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other peoples backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.” IfsWritingBookCharacterWrittenNegativeEnglandBackgroundsIndianCapability Author:Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
“In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high.” IfsKnowsPoetStandardsExpectationsEnglandBackgroundsEnormousIrelandFabricWovenForeground Author:David Whyte
“I have written millions of words about contemporary England - in journalism. Why don't I take it as the background for a novel? I may do one day. But the simple answer is that it does not excite the novelistic part of my brain; it does not fire it up.” MayDoeSimpleAnswersBrainMillionsNovelFireWrittenOne DayEnglandBackgroundsContemporaryJournalism Author:Sebastian Faulks
“I worked with an amazing dialect coach named Jill McCullough. We did Skype sessions while I was shooting "No Escape" in Thailand, actually. So three times a week I would have long, two-hour sessions with her just working on the nuance of the accent, which I had had a huge background in because I went to drama school in England for four years.” YearsLongTwoSchoolThreeHoursFourWeekHugeDramaEnglandCoachesBackgroundsShootingFour YearsAccentsThree TimesSessionNuanceDialectThailandSkypeDialect Coach Author:Lake Bell
“I had had a huge background in the nuance of the accent because I went to drama school in England for four years.” YearsSchoolFourHugeDramaEnglandBackgroundsFour YearsAccentsNuanceSkypeDialect Coach Author:Lake Bell
“I have a cultural background that's shaped in England, France and Germany. Bringing that in is nice, in terms of how an actor plays a role or speaks in an interview.” PlayActorsSpeakTermRolesNiceEnglandBackgroundsFranceGermanyInterviews Author:Richard Sammel
“I had a very colorless background, and when I left Ohio and moved to England, nobody knew who I was and I had a real freedom. I could be free to experiment and experience things and I liked that a lot.” RealLeftEnglandMovedExperimentsBackgroundsOhioReal FreedomColorless Author:Chrissie Hynde
“I've probably read maybe by now fifteen, twenty books on Matthew. I'd say the authors I like best are an English fellow named Michael Goulder, who taught at the University of Birmingham in England, and he writes about the Jewish background in Matthew's gospel, which is part of what I was just talking about, which is just really thrilling to me.” WritingBookTalkingTaughtEnglandTwentiesFellowsUniversityBackgroundsFifteenThrillingMatthewBirmingham Author:John Shelby Spong
“I think the whole emphasis in England, in universities, on practical criticism (but not that so much as on historical criticism, knowing what period a line comes from) this is almost paralysing. In America, in University, we read - what? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, that is where we began. Shakespeare flaunted in the background. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I think that' for the young poet, the writing poet, it is not quite so frightening to go to university in America as it is in England, for these reasons.” ThinkingWritingReasonWholeAmericaYoungLinesKnowingPoetPeriodsCriticismEnglandAgreeHistoricalUniversityPracticalsBackgroundsNot SureFrighteningEmphasisDylanEliotYeats Author:Sylvia Plath
“The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.” PeopleLooksPersonsMadeStoriesWould BeGuyClassEnglandBritishBackgroundsComicCinemaLook UpVillainAccentsWorking ClassRottenCiphers Author:Michael Caine
“My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.” CountryRunningAmericaSportsCrossesEnglandAthleteTrackBackgroundsRacingIntroductionCross Country RunningMotivational Cross Country Running Author:Roger Bannister
“English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be.” WayShouldDoneFormLiteratureViewsGrowingOughtDisciplineTraditionEnglandPoint Of ViewBackgroundsFranceGermanyNativeSomedaySpainEthnicityAmerican LiteratureCanonDenmarkEnglish LiteratureComparative Literature Author:Paula Gunn Allen
“Three years after my first trip to Haiti, I realized there was another emotional note that had to be reckoned with: the intense, vibrant color of these worlds. Searing light and intense color seemed somehow embedded in the cultures that I had begun working in, so utterly different from the gray-brown reticence of my New England background. Since then, I have worked predominantly in color.” WorldYearsFirstsDifferentLightCultureThreeEmotionalColorEnglandNotesI RealizedBackgroundsIntenseBrownGrayThree YearsEmbeddedHaitiNew EnglandReticenceVibrant Colors Author:Alex Webb