February | 2014 | An American Wife in Wiltshire

There’ll always be an England

While there’s a country lane,

Wherever there’s a cottage small

Beside a field of grain –

“There’ll always be an England” (1939 song)

It’s been a quiet day here in my corner of Wiltshire, and now it is evening and I’m trying to come up with a topic for this week’s blog. I’m also baking cookies, so I can only write for ten-minute intervals before I have to hop up and trot into the kitchen to peer into the oven. When I trot back to the desk to stare some more at the blank computer screen it is often with a warm, soft cookie in my hand and crumbs around my mouth. It occurs to me, on one of these trips to check on the cookies, as I stand surveying my kitchen, that perhaps my readers would be interested to know something more about my house – my first British home. So come with me while I take you on a little tour. Continue reading →

“I know your head aches. I know you’re tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher’s window. But think what you’re trying to accomplish – just think what you’re dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it’s the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixture of sounds. And that’s what you’ve set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.” – George Bernard Shaw, My Fair Lady

In a song from My Fair Lady Professor Henry Higgins famously asks, “Why can’t the English learn how to speak?” Also in that same song he rather rudely remarks, “There are even places where English completely disappears. In America they haven’t used it in years.”

English can be a beautiful language. There is a grandeur and majesty when it is spoken and written well which has inspired people through the ages. The speeches and soliloquies of Shakespeare’s plays can still send a shiver of excitement down a listener’s spine – over four hundred years after they were written. However, when a good language goes bad, to paraphrase a well-known nursery rhyme, it is horrid. Continue reading →