Brits Abroad Have a Bad Reputation

The British love nothing more than to transport their own class calibrations, their own sense of identity as being closely allied to class and they take it abroad with them. In the 19th century there grows up a whole sort of school of hilarious caricatures of tourist types you know the fuss pot in valid or the terribly frightened lady who thinks that foreigners are all out to steal her purse. These are all highlighted by the tourist experience when British types themselves are thrown into proximity with other types. And I think that it's that sort of slightly democratising experience that makes our accounts of our own tourist adventures very particularly peacock.