I am not an Anglophile

Watching "Antiques Roadshow," waiting for "Doc Martin."

A friend in England once introduced me to her neighbor as a "complete Anglophile." I was stunned, and rather horrified.. An Anglophile? Me? No way. Anglophiles are like antiquarians. . . you know, crazy people, those folks who bore everybody at parties.

I am not a boring party person. I"m a British historian.

Oh dear. Not a very convincing argument.

Strange, isn't it, how one ends up doing what one does? I ended up in British history because I had to pick a senior honors thesis advisor, and  I was having a really rough time, and the British historian at Calvin was a kind, gentle man who looked like he carried peppermints in his pockets. So, I chose him instead of the famous French history guy or the cool U.S. social history guy or the serious ancient history guy. It had nothing to do with the subject; it was all about the guy. At that point in my life I desperately needed a grandpa, and Henry Ippel was it. I wrote my honors thesis, and that became what I submitted with grad school applications, so of course I ended up in British history. Happenstance, really. Just a lonely fatherless girl looking for someone to care about her. And here was this aging British history professor, such a decent man, who was willing to play the part. In such arbitrary ways, one's life gets decided.

And so, arbitrarily, as a result of a kindly college professor who never actually offered me a peppermint, I've spent much of my life studying, reading about, thinking about, living in the British Isles. I know more about British politics, social life, intellectual developments, popular and high culture, than I do the Southern American counterparts, even tho' I live in southern Louisiana. Ostensibly. But can one really live in a place when one spends most of one's time thinking about somewhere else?

After more than 20 years, I still find the South an alien place. I can't figure it out; I'm constantly stumbling, careening into no-go areas and horrified by what I uncover. Would I have embrace my area of study with such passion if I'd been able to live my life in, say, Chicago? Dunno. Life didn't happen that way. All I know is that when Keith is out of town, I switch on the Baton Rouge public radio station in the evenings: At 9 pm, the BBC World Service comes on and stays on all night long. I go to sleep, and I wake up through the night and finally in the morning, to these beautiful, comforting British accents. Strangely, the sound of home.