Chapter One

The most important thing to say about the English and the Americans is that they are crazy about one another. Americans think of English people as slightly smarter Americans. The English think of Americans as slightly sexier English people. Hearing an English accent, Americans break into smiles. Millions of Americans got up at four in the morning to watch the royal wedding. I think Jamaicans and Trinidadians are especially popular in the United States because of their English accents. On a car trip from San Francisco to Oregon, I once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be English. He complained bitterly that wherever he went Americans loved him, fed him, put him up overnight. He wanted to sleep rough out on the frontier, but Americans were just too friendly. We approached my house in Portland at night, and I sheepishly offered him a bed and some food. He thanked me, but asked me to drop him in a city park to sleep outside.

I was surprised and delighted to find that especially outside of London, English people are equally enchanted by an American accent. I think we have much the same exotic-but-safe allure that the English have for us. In the abstract, we all have our national prejudices, and every once in a while, like when BP pollutes the entire Gulf of Mexico, the press plays up US/UK animosities. But up close and personal, people in our two nations like one another a lot more than we seem to like our own compatriots.

Americans who visit England invariably love absolutely everything about it, except the food, the warm beer, the cold rain, the swarms of American