Shepherd Mead, bestselling author of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, came to live in England with his family in 1958. Six years later he published a satirical handbook for fellow Americans to guide them through the nuances of British culture and save them from blunders: ‘Write down now that pants always mean underpants’, he advises. ‘What you wear out in the open are trousers. Mistakes in this area can lead to nasty misunderstandings.’ Structured around the fictional experience of an American couple Peggy and Buckley Brash and their two children, the book covers such topics as ‘How to Dress in England’, ‘The Dream House and How to Rebuild it’, and ‘How to Live with the Upper Classes Without Having Any Money’. Through the Brash family’s encounters with the British and their bewildered conversations with each other as they attempt to interpret an alien way of life, Mead answers pertinent questions such as ‘Do English schools create sex madness?’ and ‘Is England really a pest hole?’ with quirky and affectionate humour. Written with the light touch and incisive wit which brought Mead such success with his earlier book, and deftly illustrated with dynamic cartoons, How to Live Like A Lord without Really Trying is packed with gems on Anglo-American differences and pithy advice which tells us as much about the British of the 1960s as it does about their visitors from across the Pond.
