In the Gimson book I read recently I came across this description of the attitude of most British people given in a book on Queen Victoria by the historian Cecil Woodham-Smith (who turns out to be a woman born in Tenby and writing in the seventies).
British belief in the superiority of the British nation knew no bounds. It was an article of faith that one Englishman could beat six Frenchmen, more than six of any other foreign nation, and it was an almost religious conviction that the British possessed a sense of justice and fair play to be found nowhere else. An Englishman stood up for the weak, faced disaster without losing his head, kept his word and never kicked a man when he was down.
My grandfather was a Victorian and even in the seventies when I grew up this attitude was sometimes in the air. it is not hoow people think today.
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