When I was growing up in America, children were told a story about the boy George Washington who, one night when nobody was around, chopped down a neighbour’s cherry tree. He could have got away with the prank, but when the neighbour blamed someone else, young George confessed to the deed, saying: “I cannot tell a lie.” Honesty in all matters was drilled into us as a moral imperative.
So when I came to live in England and married an otherwise thoroughly honourable Englishman, a professional historian who would never have adjusted the truth when teaching or writing about his subject, I was shocked by the ease with which he could be insincere on social occasions. I would hear him, for example, praising a writer whose books I knew he deplored. He even, on one occasion, managed to charm Margaret Thatcher, whom he detested.
In England honesty is a policy that guarantees social ostracism. Nevertheless, like Andrew Brown when in Sweden (Opinion, 30 July), I still feel more at ease speaking my mind with fellow Americans.
Sheila Hale
London
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