If Only They Didn't Speak English

If Only They Didn't Speak English - Jon Sopel ***

Teamed up with Emily Maitlis, John Sopel was for several years host of by far the best of the BBC political podcasts, Americast - most tend to be painfully worthy, including Americast post Sopel and Maitlis. The pair left to set up their own Newsagents podcast, but this has been uninspiring - it has only been since they've done a US spinoff that the pair have once again recaptured their magic.

One of there reasons I read this book from 2018 was my enjoyment of the engaging approach taken in the podcast - the other was the comment by Bill Bryson on the front, which made me think this would be like of one of Bryson's books - wry humour, underlining the differences between the US and the UK. In reality, If Only They Didn't Speak English is very different.

I'm glad I read it, but it was significantly harder going than I expected. Sopel's writing style has none of the verve of his podcasting persona - this is a serious book, examining a range of ways that American culture differs from British, whether it be attitudes to race, patriotism or guns. Although there are plenty of anecdotes from Sopel's time as BBC correspondent in the US, there is a surprising amount of historical material, some from the early days of the country and more from the first half of the twentieth century. Although the subtitle tells us these are 'notes from Trump's America' (the first time around), there's a lot about Obama's America too, as Sopel contrasts the then new and the previous president and their actions.

It's a shame Sopel didn't bring in more of his personal experience and cut back on the historical context a bit: the way the book is written feels like he was trying to make this more of a weighty tome than it really is. It would also have helped if the material had been broken up more - the 364 pages are split into ten chapters which have no subheadings or section breaks. This makes reading it quite heavy going. However, it was genuinely interesting to take in a view from the first year of Trump's first presidency as we are about to start his next one.

You can buy If Only They Didn't Speak English from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:

Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog