I have some sort of mental deficiency which means that I hardly ever watch television. I have seen little bits of 'Yes, Minister' and I know what you're talking about. I like British understatement (of which the original post is sort of an example) because I believe it improves the general IQ -- you have to do some work to figure out what the person you're talking to is actually saying.
I suppose it’s a bit like dealing with some Asians, when you can’t directly say no, because it would be rude. I love “ with all due respect”, that’s a ripper! You see things like this in court - law court that is. My learned colleague, I hesitate to mention, etc.
There is probably an academic study of this sort of language -- its "register" -- perhaps as a way of avoiding physical conflict? I've been re-reading the Patrick O'Brian series of novels set in the early 19th Century, and I have found that I unconsciously have started to incorporate that style of speech -- which O'Brian was brilliant at capturing -- when I write. I'm sure all this stuff has been well-studied by people who specialize in 'sociolinguistics'.
Tortuous display of good manners or avoidance of intimacy too. “Patrick can be a bit of a snob, socially and intellectually”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_O'Brian
Well, I think he's the greatest historical novelist ever. I grew up on Hornblower, but he blows those books out of the water. He's better than Mary Renault, although I love her novels about ancient Greece. Christopher Hitchens caught it best, I think, with a review in the London Review of Books (or NY Review). Although you could fill a book with erudite reviews of O'Brian. I've just read that Wiki article. It's one of the minor regrets of my life that I did not attend an appreciation dinner for him at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, very near where I lived, although I probably could not have gotten in. Almost every sentence is a gem. I can't praise him highly enough.
He was prolific. I wasn’t aware of his writing as I read detective stories and recipe books. He seemed a sad bloke.
I think he put a lot of himself into Stephen Maturin, who is the one of Aubrey-Maturin pair who appeals to nerdy pointy heads. He is a brooding, introspective, self-critical type, an idealist who has had to make compromises, not physically handsome ... These 20 novels would make the most wonderful TV series.
Anything to do with boats is good. The Onedin Line was good. About 55 years ago , there was a tv series about Sir Francis Drake. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Francis_Drake_(TV_series) It was terrific. Elizabeth the first was a great intriguer and she had to be careful that her pirate, Sir Francis, didn’t upset Phillip of Spain.
I am an American, but this is close to what I mean by the things I say. I guess it may be a WASP thing.
Well, Americans have a lot of British genes in them. You know that old myth about if two white people each have one great great great great grandparent who was Black, and they make a baby together, there is a small chance the baby may be born pure Black? (Which I reckon was a desperate excuse, only slightly more plausible than the one Mary told Joseph.) Pehaps that happened to you! I've not noticed many Americans being subtle like that. Especially New Yorkers.
