Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

LanewayRat t1_it6tr7w wrote

Yes this. I get the impression that an upper class male demeanour of those times was often tending towards a flamboyant, carefree, foppish, quirky and theatrical demeanour. Perhaps it fell out of favour in the more practical times of the Second World War and beyond. This doesn’t mean they were necessarily more gay but maybe a gay man might have been at home in this environment, if he kept his sexuality very private.

The negative side of this culture was that it was a privileged and rarefied existence, only sustainable amongst an elite who could afford to ignore the real world and be child-like and peculiar if they wanted to be.

This culture seems to live on, to some limited extent, in the British public school educated elite. To an Australian looking on from a distance, people like Boris Johnson and that Reece-Mogs (?) person seem ludicrously foppish and embarrassingly campy and extreme in many ways.

13

TimeEfficiency6323 t1_itaxdxr wrote

A lot of it came to an end after World War I. Terrified by the idea of Bolshevism spreading westwards the UK government brought in the start of the social welfare system and paid for it with Income and Inheritance taxes.

Land became less of a guarantee of wealth and by World War II a number of the old estates had fallen into ruin. Meantime, family heads were having to cut off their wastrel sons.

3

LaoBa t1_itmd3a9 wrote

Since 1900, 1,200 country houses have been demolished in England. In Scotland, 378 architecturally important country houses have been demolished,

2