Piotr Wilczek is a diplomat, author and academic. He served as Poland’s ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom
In the midst of a quiet afternoon tidying my home library – that noble pursuit which always begins with ambition and ends in nostalgia – I unearthed what must surely be the most British book I own: How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms, published 30 years ago by Oxford University
Peter Mandelson’s resignation from the House of Lords – and the Labour party – is all rather undignified. The Epstein emails reveal that Mandelson’s relationship with the disgraced paedophile amounted to far more than just casual chitchat. Still, there is something ironic and typically British about the current spectacle. Mandelson’s departure from the Lords was
As an outside observer sitting in Warsaw, there is a peculiarly persistent oddity in the culture wars of Britain. For anyone outside the cycle of outrage that provides the fuel for the culture wars, they are increasingly difficult to follow. The level of apocalyptic seriousness is high – the stakes are always life or death
Agatha Christie, who died fifty years ago today on 12 January 1976, possessed a genius for making the ordinary strange. In her imagination, the sleepiest lanes of the English countryside could, at any moment, become the setting for murder. Yet alongside the vicars, the colonels and the gossipy spinsters, another set of figures appears again
After three-and-a-half years as Poland’s ambassador in London, I’ve come home with two strong impressions. The first: the United Kingdom remains one of the most astonishing places in the world. The second: the British are suddenly, and oddly, intent on convincing themselves it isn’t. Everywhere I went — dinner parties in Hampstead, conversations with taxi
In 1614, the Scottish writer John Barclay published a slim Latin book with the grand title Icon Animorum, or The Mirror of Minds. In it, he marched the nations of Europe across the stage: the proud Spaniard, the scheming Italian, the frivolous Frenchman, the solemn German, the valiant but volatile Pole. It was caricature rather than anthropology,
The Royal Parks have spoken: no, London’s swans are not being roasted for supper. Their cygnets are intact, their lakes tranquil, their wildlife officers alert. Yet for a moment this week the nation was asked to imagine Eastern Europeans stalking Hyde Park by moonlight, stuffing swans into shopping bags. Nigel Farage, on LBC, suggested as
Netflix’s film of The Thursday Murder Club has all the makings of a British export hit: a cosy crime plot, a cast of national treasures, a backdrop steeped in English eccentricity. And then comes Bogdan Jankowski, a Polish labourer with a confiscated passport – a character who could have been lifted straight from a tabloid cartoon. The
