George Mikes, journalist and travel writer, was born on this day in 1912.
A native of Hungary, Mikes went to England in 1938 (to cover the Munich crisis) and stayed. He specialized in humorous books about countries back before the age of political correctness. But he was never mean, and at his best he was both funny and insightful. "On the Continent, people have good food," he wrote in perhaps his most famous book, How To Be an Alien. "In England they have good table manners." (This was back before the British learned how to cook.)
Little Cabbages begins: "In Hungary I was taught that France was a Great Power; in England I was told that France was a great joke."
Any Souvenirs: Central Europe Revisited , published in 1971, is his most poignant book, beginning with a lament for the vanished culture of the coffee-house, and ending with his expulsion from his native land. This last chapter is titled: "How To Be an Undesirable Alien." As with all great humorists, the light touch overrode personal sorrow and disappointment.
