The English country house: Partying, hunting, shooting | Hacker News Reader

The English country house: Partying, hunting, shooting

economist.com

37 pointspepys9 comments

If you found this interesting at all, you have to sample the master of country house humor, PG "Plum" Wodehouse.

(His most famous series being the Jeeves and Wooster books and stories.)

I don't understand why this was submitted.

How likely do you think it is that a world war will break out?

What do you think people would have said in 1913? What about 1938? (Lest you think this is some rhetorical dogwhistle shit: don't worry. It isn't. Just an open question.)

WW1 was truly unexpected-- all of the mutual alliances and it all being caused by a random assassination.

WW2 was more expected.

And, idk, I don't have the benefit of hindsight, but I really doubt a world war in which the US is involved will break out this decade. Like, with who? Nukes & M.A.D. have still changed the equation and made a conventional-weapons world war unreasonable.

>WW1 was truly unexpected

Really? I read that Germany had been planning and not so secretly saying they were planning on taking France for years before. (Book, Guns of August, iirc).

WW1 was fully expected, what was unexpected was the size and difficulty of it. All involved countries had long-standing beef, but nobody thought they'd really try to settle it at the same time and so cruelly. Treaties and alliances are just pieces of paper (as Molotov-Ribbentropp demonstrated later), what really triggered conflict was a belief that "the time had come" to finally employ all those wonderful toys built up over 30 years of relative peace and technological advance around Europe (a continent routinely ravaged by frequent skirmishes up until then). They all thought they would have been winners in a few months, ended up stuck in trenches with brutal casualties, and conflict snowballed at the fringes.

  > How likely do you think it is that a world war will break out?

What has that to do with country piles? Is this what the hip young kids do nowadays, dubstep raves at the old manor?

Likely a fan of Downton Abbey, the BBC soap opera,

It takes place in pre-WW1 or 2 English country-side.

I actually enjoyed it.

Easy Karma

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