British culture can’t cope with a heatwave

I find it almost frightening to be stuck in London in a heatwave. It is not just the bad air. It is also the sense that this is something that does not suit the British. White northern people have never discovered an elegant means of wearing little in public. We look dreadful and behave as if this is an occasion for having fun, although we secretly know that it is just something unpleasant to be got through. Our street life becomes everything contained in that grim word ‘vibrant’. All cultures are precarious. That of London works only between 0 and 21 degrees centigrade.

This is an extract from Charles Moore’s notes. The full article can be found here.