The rights and wrongs of modern manners

image:columbusparent.com
culled from:modernmanners.com

Over the past couple of years, I have been working on a book about manners. When I have mentioned this to friends and acquaintances, the most common response has been, “Oh yes, 'Manners makyth man’ and all that.”
This suggests how tired a lot of our thinking about manners has become. The motto chosen more than 600 years ago by William of Wykeham for the school he founded – Winchester – and for its Oxford sibling, New College, seems dignified but limited. Nobody who regurgitates it is suggesting that this is all there is to manners. Yet fresh discussion of the subject tends to congeal into dollops of received wisdom.
My plan was to examine the history of manners, rather than complaining about their current deterioration or setting out a personal vision of what it means to be polite. I was keen to examine where this array of behaviours comes from – and supplement my historical digging with anthropology and a little neuroscience.
I focused on English manners (and not even the broader question of British manners) as a way into larger issues: how manners relate to class, the importance of language as a social lubricant, and the idea of manners as protection – not just from others, but also from ourselves. At the same time, English manners illuminate the essence of Englishness: its historical and geographical peculiarities, and also smaller quirks, such as the masochistic delight in queuing.
As far back as we can trace, notions of proper conduct have been shaped by individuals, rather than by committee. Their starting point has been behaviour at mealtimes, which is seen as a reliable indication of how people are likely to behave elsewhere.