Rude awakening: polished diners ignore the rowdy lowerclasses in a 15th-century Flemish illustration
© J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES, USA / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England
by Keith Thomas (Yale University Press, £20)
“Never park here,” thunders a sign attached to the railings of one Oxford college. As such communications go, this one has plenty to recommend it—but alas its brevity is far from typical. In recent years there has been a surge in the number of English signs identifying themselves as a “Polite Notice.” These two six-letter words often herald a long message that errs in every other respect on the side of impoliteness: “Stop pissing all over the lavatory like a fucking animal,” to take one recently spotted example. That is, admittedly, an unusual instance of the genre. The majority of polite notices have to do with cars and where not to put them, rather than with toilets and how not to treat them.