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The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.

Simon Hoggart

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Simon Hoggart
Age: 67 †
Born: 1946
Born: May 26
Died: 2014
Died: January 5
Journalist
Simon David Hoggart
Spontaneity
Japanese
Funeral
Formal
Washington
Dinner
Party
Imperial

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The Chinese do make vast quantities of wine for home consumption, but you wouldn't want to drink it yourself.
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Americans are fascinated by their own love of shopping. This does not make them unique. It's just that they have more to buy than most other people on the planet. And it's also an affirmation of faith in their country.
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If you read the 'Daily Mail,' you would imagine that the British middle classes lead lives of unremitting misery.
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The British are the last national group who can be insulted by Hollywood without any comeback. These days if you depict Italians as gangsters, Saudis as terrorists or Mexicans as violent drug dealers you'll never hear the end of it. But as still the largest - and possibly the richest - ethnic group in the States, the British just have to take it.
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America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they'd be smaller then these.
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When you visit a foreign city you are in it, but not of it, separated by a glass wall. Once, while a student, I was getting dressed in my ground-floor room when a family of Italians crossed the grass to watch, as if I were laid on for their amusement and instruction.
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I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else.
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British diplomats who worked in Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis are deeply upset by Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning film 'Argo,' which suggests they refused shelter to the group who managed to get out of the U.S. embassy.
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In Washington, success is just a training course for failure.
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I cannot be alone in being pretty nauseated by Red Nose Day, or at least its television manifestation. Do I think that wretchedly poor children in Africa should get food and life-saving drugs? Of course. Do I want to be hectored into contributing by celebrities who earn more in a 10-minute slot than many of these families get in a year? Nope.
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Canada is not so much a country as a clothesline nearly 4,000 miles long. St John's in Newfoundland is closer to Milan, Italy than to Vancouver.
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The nanny seemed to be extinct until 1975, when, like the coelacanth, she suddenly and unexpectedly reappeared in the shape of Margaret Thatcher.
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I've served on five different juries, and many of them were bonkers in their own way.
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While it is entirely untrue that Canadians lack a sense of humour, the funniest ones tend to head south: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox.
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Kind 'Guardian' readers have been forwarding me round robin Christmas newsletters for years now: lengthy missives full of perfect children, exotic holidays, talented pets and endless, tedious detail. The notes that accompanied them revealed they had inspired in the original recipients everything from mild irritation to absolute rage.
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Reagan is the only man to take the presidency as a part-time job, a means of filling up the otherwise empty hours of retirement.
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They're called Virgin Trains because they don't go all the way.
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Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
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Most successful American politicians look well-fed on endorsements, campaign contributions and chicken dinners.
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Corney & Barrow are proud to have the royal warrant, meaning that they provide the Palace with some of the greatest - and necessarily most expensive - wines from around the world. I am pleased to say that they also hold my own warrant, for providing exceptional wines at - surprisingly - modest prices.
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