Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by

7 July 2017


County gentleman who read in their newspapers the speeches of this or that Minister would mutter to themselves that he was certainly a clever fellow. But the county gentlemen were not made comfortable by this thought. The country gentlemen had a strong suspicion that cleverness was somehow unBritish. That sort of restless, unpredictable brilliance belonged most of all to Britain’s arch-enemy, the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte; the country gentlemen could not approve it.

Clarke, Susanna Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), pg64

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