“Last summer I went out with another friend who edits one of the big news magazines in the US, a very charming anglophiliac Wasp. Unwisely I began to explain the European suspicion of America, listing the usual grievances that now form the charge sheet. He took it for a while then deliberately set down his glass and gazed at its stem, evidently struggling to hold on to his temper. ‘The trouble with Europe is that every time you get into trouble you yell across the Atlantic for help. But, when things are good you expect us to listen to your horseshit lectures about the way we run things in the US.’”
