Top Portuguese academic decries 'filthy' English
A best-selling book penned by
a Portuguese don has excoriated the English for being 'promiscuous, dirty and
drunken'
By Gregory Walton
11:04AM BST 14 Sep 2014 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/11095057/PICS-PLEASE-Top-Portuguese-academic-decries-filthy-English.html
As a love-letter to an adopted country goes, Portuguese
academic João Magueijo's to Britain is perhaps somewhat lacking in love.
The Imperial College physics professor slams England for
being one of the 'most rotten societies in the world' in a 188 page diatribe in
which he describes his hosts as 'violent animals'.
The dapper academic, 47, wrote Bifes Mal Pasados
(Undercooked Beef) as a response to what he describes as 'pathologically
violent' English culture.
According to Magueijo, the English are "always
fighting. I never met such a group of animals. English culture is
pathologically violent. The English are unrestrained wild beasts and are
totally out of control."
The controversial book, so far only published in Portuguese,
is illustrated with a photograph of a feckless looking toff in front of the
Elizabeth Tower, complete with bowler hat and pocket watch.
Magueijo also takes umbrage with Britain's drinking culture.
"It is not unusual to drink 12 pints, or two huge
buckets of beer, per person," he writes.
"Even a horse would get drunk with this but in England
it is standard practice.
"In England real men have to drink like sponges, eat
like skeletons and throw up everything at the end of the evening."
The Imperial scientist, does not just reserve his ire for
Britain's young men.
Magueijo relates an episode from his time as a don at the
University of Cambridge in which a female student vomited during a formal
dinner and continued eating, drinking and 'shouting nonsense as if nothing had
happened'.
Students, perhaps usurprisingly, are the focus of much of
the Iberian's scorn.
The book, which is dedicated to the Queen, goes on to
chronicle his experiences of students' halls.
"When you visit English homes, or the toilets at
schools or in student lodgings, they are all so disgusting that even my
grandmother's poultry cage is cleaner," he writes.
Responding to suggestions of a backlash from his hosts,
Magueijo said he is confident that British people would be able to laugh off
his criticisms.
"I do not fear any backlash. I trust the British sense
of humour," he said, insisting to the Sunday Times that he loves British
"tolerance, the creativity, the madness of the people. I'd had so many
awful experiences attempting to have holidays in the UK that I thought they
could serve as a good narrative backbone, Fawlty Towers-style."
The book has sold 20,000 copies - no mean feat in a country
of just 10 million - but there are no plans for an English edition.
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Paramedics look after a person at a temporary field hospital
near London's Liverpool Street Photo: AP
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Bestseller reveals don’s life with ‘filthy’ English
Paulo Anunciacao and David Harrison Published: 14 September
2014 /Sunday Times /
A BOOK written by a Portuguese academic based in London that
portrays the English as “violent animals” and accuses them of being drunk,
dirty and sexually promiscuous has become an unlikely bestseller in his home
country.
Joao Magueijo, a physics professor at Imperial College
London who spent seven years as a fellow at Cambridge, writes that England has
“one of the most rotten societies in Europe, possibly the world”.
In Bifes Mal Passados (Undercooked Beef), written in
Portuguese, Magueijo, 47, ridicules English life from eating habits to personal
hygiene and sexual behaviour.
The English are “always fighting”, he writes, in one of many
generalisations. “I never met such a group of animals. English culture is
pathologically violent. The English are unrestrained wild beasts and totally
out of control.”
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