This Will Do For The Duke

“The Duke of Bedford’s Book of Snobs”, which the Duke writes in collaboration with George Mikes, is designed for laughs, we think. But like the Mitford rules of U and Non-U, it may be used as some sort of a guide-book on how to break into the top echelons of contemporary society—English society, that is. Much of it has no application to the Colonial or Dominion variety.

Although many of the Duke’s pearls of snob wisdom fall flat on their faces you may be interested to know that the word itself is supposed to have derived from the Latin, “sine nobilitate” which, in the Middle Ages, Oxford and Cambridge universities used to distinguish undergraduates of non-noble birth from those who were. This was abbreviated to “s. nob” and hence the word snob was born. According to the Duke.

And, in the unlikely event of your owning a tiara or a set of silver fish knives, you will no doubt be pleased to learn, although the reasons may escape you, that the former is never worn in an hotel; and the latter never used at all by those whose breeding is above reproach.

The Duke, who has managed to hang on to the ancestral acres by allowing the proletariat to prowl around them at 2/6 a time, probably has had more opportunity than most for observing his fellow man in all social aspects. Being a Duke has proved, in his case, to be a career as well as a social distinction and, as he goes to some pains to point out, he thoroughly enjoys the experience. (BOOK OF SNOBS. Ure Smith. 27/6.)