Quote:quote: am an Englishman and approached this book with the same emotion that all English people approach all American humour - with the urbanity of born of pure indifference.

The articles it contains, one by one, are sophomoric in their scope and detail but, hell, so is the American Pie franchise so beloved of US audiences. If you like that, you'll like this. What a comment on George Bush's America, eh?

But the name. Grasse... Grasse... Why did it ring such a bell with me? And why would such a person with such a name take such a dislike to the British who have done nothing more than give him the language with which he speaks and the economic, cultural, political, artistic, strategic and sexual systems within which he operates? Then it struck me. Grasse is a descendant of François Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse. Americans will know him as the French admiral who assisted George Washington during the War of Independence. British readers will know him, of course, as the Frenchman who betrayed the bold American colonialists by withdrawing his ships at a time crucial to their struggle so that he could go and loot for his own personal benefit the rich shipping lanes of the West Indies - and was soundly trounced by a much smaller squadron of Royal Naval ships under the command of Admiral Hood at the Battle of the Saints. Beaten like a gong, believe me.

So of course Grasse hates the British. He is, after all, a scion of one of the most consistently destructive nations that history has ever known. France. The common enemy of all the world.