Paula Byrne: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, the negativity as a means of conferring status upon yourself. It’s slightly tall poppy syndrome, that you don’t want to big someone up too much because it makes you feel small, and it takes your light away from you if you are a tall poppy. I think it is tied in with something that I’ve really come to value the older I’ve got, which is English reticence and English diffidence. Actually, the older I get, the more I’m like, “I really like that because it does feel very intrinsic to who I am as a British person,” which is — and you might say negative, I might say realistic. You might say pessimistic, I might say honest. It just depends how we define these things. I think when someone gives you a compliment, or to me, they mean it in England. They mean it because they very rarely give you one. I’m like, “Oh, you must really mean that.” That has value. I think that stiff upper lip has value. As a therapist, it also does not have value. As a therapist, family secrets are the worst thing that you can ever do to it. I see both sides of it, if that makes sense. In terms of the novel and in terms of the great writers, I think you are right about that. There is a such a deep pessimism, a strain that runs through. However, as with Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen, you always get that leavened with satire, with humor, with “Don’t take yourself too seriously.” I think that’s the great British sin: Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you take yourself too seriously, you’re doomed. Do you read Waugh as actually a snob and a misanthrope, or is that a put-on and that actually he’s very good-natured about humanity?…

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