When I was about 14, my family emigrated from England to Australia, and we decided to stop in Bali on the way through.
In England, it’s a rare thing to see a player smoking but, all in all, I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and, in the short term, it’s much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body, which becomes more susceptible to injury.
There are some things that money can’t buy: peace of mind, for starters, and lean muscle mass. Neither the Queen of England nor the founder of Microsoft can put in an order for either one.
I had a bad break up at university – you know, when your heart breaks for the very first time, and you think, ‘I must leave this island,’ as if it had never happened to anyone before. I said ‘OK, I’ll go to England,’ and it was the best decision I ever made.
There is probably nothing wrong with art for art’s sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.
When you arrive in England for football it’s a paradise.
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England – there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn’t abusive, it was a good life for people.
The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren’t a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.
Social media is one of the hardest things about playing for England.
It’s really sort of morbid, but she said her mother wanted to see me all her life. And when she died, she made just one request: that a picture of me be put into her casket. So somewhere in England, I’m in a casket.
We… our war began September the 3rd 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and thereafter the great state of danger in England at that time, with the bombings, necessitated the evacuation of children.
I got a job as soon as I could – 11 or 12. I started babysitting and then I got a part-time job at a pharmacy in England. I just remember loving the feeling of going out and buying my own clothes! I’d go bargain-hunting and get secondhand vintage stuff.
Up until the War of the Roses there had been continual conflict in England.
To wake up in England and have the newspaper on your front door with a headline that says, ‘Ozzie’s Beach Whale of a Daughter,’ doesn’t really do much for your self-esteem at all.
But I love filmmaking – I’m not ashamed of that. You’re sort of vilified if you say that in England.
The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive – no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.
Tea-shops were to become my favourite haunts in England.
Democratic systems based on the concept of a homogeneous nation such as England are very definitely not applicable to heterogeneous countries such as India, and this simple fact is the root cause of India’s constitutional ills.
Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England.
I have dual citizenship; I would be happy to go to England. I would be very happy to go to America.
Coats are my favorite thing, and it’s always cold in England. I’m comfortable spending a bit of money if you know you’re going to be wearing it 10 years later.
England as a culture has endured so much more than America has as a culture, so it’s given them a different perspective.
My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I’ve worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
We did an album one time called White Mansions, about the civil war, but it was written by a guy from England. His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective.
The reign of Henry VIII is the axis around which England turns.
My mom, well, she’s half Greek, half German-Italian; born in England. She’s just a nomad. She loves Middle Eastern style, Indian style, so much so that she ended up having Indian babies.
My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels – not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The Thames could be thought of as England’s longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.
I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England.
In France, it’s easy to know which team is going to win the game, whereas in England, anywhere you play, you know it’s going to be difficult.
From 1 till 7, when we moved to England, I spoke only Portuguese.
When I first started writing, I was living in England and I had that uniquely English sense of sarcasm, which has definitely seemed to have left me. I am a naturalized American and my sensibility has become far more American.
But, actually, so many of the clerics that I’ve met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.
I recently spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield, England, which is where I’m from. I wouldn’t move back there, but it’s funny when you spend a bit of time in the place where you were brought up. You kind of realize how that place has had quite a big effect on you or made you a certain way.
Shortly after that, we got management problems over in England, and Judas Priest asked me to join.
Only 38 per cent of players in the Premier League are English; that is a damning statistic. Soon, the England manager will have to go scouting for players in the Championship – and when I say ‘soon’ I mean the next four or five years, perhaps even for the next World Cup.
The greatest shoemaker in England for many, many decades; he used to be the royal shoe-maker for the Queen Mother. This is where I learnt my trade.
The level of football in England is the top. English football is the leader in the world.
Obviously, I am hoping to go on and win many trophies for Spurs and for England. That’s always been the aim since I was a kid, dreaming of lifting the trophy one day for them, so that’s what I’ve got to do.
As for me not playing for England, I’ve got no regret at all.
If I could do shoes for anyone, it would be a special project for the Queen of England. She and the Pope are the ultimate clients.
England is my wife, America my mistress. It is very good sometimes to get away from one’s wife.
It was surreal to think the Queen of England not only knew who I was but thought enough of what I do to give me an award.
You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can’t say I’m very impressed with the food in America. it’s all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.
Although I’ve lived in England for more than twenty years, I still have a foreigner’s passion for all the details of English history and rural life.
I have some real big goals with England.
I would have enjoyed playing some county cricket and learning my art that way, but I never had any ambitions at all to play for England, that’s for sure.
When ‘Bhaag Mikha Bhaag’ was released, no matter where I went – Australia, England or Canada, people around the world used to say ‘Farhan is Milkha Singh’s ditto copy.’
During my time as England captain I have always been both helpful and direct in my communications with the ECB.
I remember very vividly, as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they’re still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.
In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.
When I grew up in Tasmania, you thought that London was home. You waited to go to England as soon as you graduated, in my case on a ship bound for London via Genoa.
When I’m in England, I know I’m a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that’s German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.
I’m a pro! No, what I mean is I have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. I have been all over the place. I have studied theatre for seven years.
