Britain's Geoffrey Gorer, critic extraordinary of Africa, Japan, Russia and the U.S., has turned suddenly timid before his own country. In "Some Notes on the British Character" for the final issue of Horizon (TIME, Nov. 28), Gorer first disqualifies himself as an expert ("I cannot make such an analysis; it demands a degree of detachment which I can only achieve spasmodically and for very short periods"), then reaches some tentative conclusions. His most novel notion is that the British are shy:
"Irrational fear of strangers is a characteristic shared by a majority of...
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