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‘Would I live in America? In a heartbeat’
Wednesday, 6th May 2009
Last week, Stephen Fry gave the inaugural Spectator Lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. His topic: America’s Place In The World. Here we reprint his speech in full
‘Thank you. Thank you very much. Good lord. Well, well. Here we are. Gathered together in the very lecture theatre where Henry Morton Stanley once told an enraptured world of his momentous meeting with Dr Livingstone. Charles Darwin was a member and gave talks in this same hall. Sir Richard Burton lectured here and John Hanning Speke... spoke. Shackleton and Hillary displayed their intimate frostbite scars to a spellbound RGS audience. Explorers, adventurers and navigators have been coming here for the best part of 180 years to tell of their discoveries. If only at school, geography teachers, surely the most scoffed and pilloried class of pedagogue there is, if only they had concentrated less on rift valleys, trig points and the major exports of Indonesia and more on the fact that geography could promise a classy royal society with the sexiest lecture theatre in the land — if only they had done that, then maybe cheap stand-up comedians and lazy cultural commentators would be less routinely scornful of geography teachers as a class and geography itself as a discipline, which is one I rather unfashionably enjoyed when I was young. Don’t ask me why.
Actually, now that I think of it, one reason I was fond of the subject was that in my prep-school geography room there were piles and piles of shiny yellow National Geographic magazines available for skimming through. These, with their glossy advertisements for Chesterfield cigarettes, Cadillac sedans and Dimple whisky, gave me my first view outside television of what America might be like. But there was another reason religiously to scan the magazines.
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David Short
May 7th, 2009 11:02amHow many 'pages' (of two paragraphs) is this?
Frankly, I wish Fry would leave our shores and promise to keep off our screens and away from ad voice-overs. A total break from having to listen to his silly, supercilious voice and opinions would do us all a lot of good.
Nancy Webster
May 7th, 2009 12:04pmOK, Steven - B----- off then !
Nancy Webster
May 7th, 2009 12:04pmOK, Steven - B----- off then !
Nancy Webster
May 7th, 2009 12:04pmOK, Steven - B----- off then !
Paul Widdowson
May 7th, 2009 2:37pmDear Mr.Fry,
I really enjoyed your recently broadcast documentary around the U.S.A.I lived there for a couple of years and share your affinty with ordinary americans.I owned 2 liquor stores in Florida 20 years ago.O.K.there was the odd bullit hole in the shop window but hey it happens.Not as bad as the wifes driving though.She drove the car straight through it,whilst taking note of a new coca cola logo and hitting the accelarator instead of the brake.I was in the store at the time and thought a bomb had gone off.She still claims not to have been aiming for me.but I still have my doubts
Peter Diamond
May 7th, 2009 3:36pmThe only saving grace is not having to hear the sycophantic laughter accompanying what reads like an astonishingly dull and empty speech.
A. MacAulay
May 7th, 2009 4:59pmFry is getting paid by the yard. But give him his due, his command of the utterly trivial is remarkable.
A. MacAulay
May 7th, 2009 4:59pmFry is getting paid by the yard. But give him his due, his command of the utterly trivial is remarkable.
Wheeler F
May 7th, 2009 5:09pmI rather liked Fry's speech. As an American living in Britain I found it all quite true in a way. I was laughing hard at the various foibles we Americans are known for and all the virtues the British fear recognizing in themselves.
Wilhelm
May 7th, 2009 5:17pm''I am a crew member of that ship of fools, the sneering liberal elite, a cheerleader of the chattering classes, a loathsome Labour luvvie, a champagne socialist, a — goddammit — a celebrity, a twittering celebrity dripping with
the sickening syrup of popular culture, political correctness and nauseating knee-jerk
liberalism.''
Stephen, you missed out supercilious twit.
Wilhelm
May 7th, 2009 5:20pmSorry Stephen, I dont think America lets in people with criminal records, remember the credit card bank fraud ?
David
May 7th, 2009 5:25pmExcellent speech from a top chap. Well on the way to national treasure status.
PlusMan
July 8th, 2009 7:40pmThis is the same superficial Stephen Fry who is a patron of an HIV charity in Manchester. Despite attempting to reach him to assist in addressing mismanagement and worse at the charity, the obnoxious Establishment-loving luvvie has ignored matters and even blocked approaches via Twitter. Meantime beneficiaries of this so-called 'charity' continue to suffer; not that Mr Fry seems to care of course.