Book description
This is a book for those who unashamedly want manners in the world.
They are the essence of living together. And we are struggling to find
rules that we can agree on in a new world where change and uncertainty
are a way of life and personal responsibility is at a disastrous low.
No-one wants to bow and scrape to the rhythms of outdated etiquette
any more. We need to seek out the original social purpose of manners
and apply the principles to life today. We need rules of respect for
each other and an agreement to stick to them. Combining an appeal to
history, anthropology and common sense with a witty disdain for the
sillier snobberies of the traditionalists, Simon Fanshawe has borrowed
the format of Erasmus's great work on behaviour, De Civilitate
Morum Puerilum, and created a modern basis for good manners.
So it doesn't matter if you pass the port to the right or the left
as long as it goes in one direction and that way everyone gets a
drink. Hold your knife any way you want except as a weapon so
strangers will never feel threatened at your table. Date, eat, work,
speak, dress, talk on your mobile, tip, text, take your children to
eat out in any way you like as long as you do it in a way that
respects other people. This is a campaign. Join now and march.
Simon Fanshawe is a Perrier Award winning comic, writer and
broadcaster. He has his own series on Radio Four -
Fanshawe Gets To
The Bottom Of...
- as well as working on other series;
The Reference Library
,
Live From London
and guest hosting,
Loose Ends, Quote Unquote,
and
Word of Mouth
. He writes for the
Guardian,
Observer
and
Telegraph
and is about to start a new series for Radio Two -
Powerfully Funny
- interviews with famous comedians. He lives in Brighton, where he is
chairman of the Economic Partnership and was instrumental in Brighton's
campaign to become a city in 2002.
