Book: How to Be an Alien

Overview
George Mikes's How to Be an Alien (1946) is a compact, witty handbook for anyone trying to make sense of British life through the eyes of an outsider. Written by a Hungarian-born journalist who settled in Britain, the book frames national peculiarities as polite puzzles to be solved rather than puzzles to be condemned. It was composed against the backdrop of World War II and its immediate aftermath, but its observations aim at character and habit more than at contemporary politics, which helps explain why many readers still find it amusing and recognizable decades later.
Mikes adopts the persona of the "alien", the foreigner trying to learn the rules, so the tone flips between bemused innocence and dry skepticism. The humour is founded on contrast: continental assumptions meet British habits, and the collisions produce a steady stream of ironic judgments and affectionate mockery. Instead of lecturing, the book invites readers to share the relief of being amused by national foibles that are as arbitrary as they are insistently observed.

Style and Structure
The book reads like a series of short essays and sketches rather than a continuous narrative. Chapters are concise, each taking a single theme, language, manners, the weather, queuing, the pub, the English sense of humour, and exploring it through anecdote, definition, and exaggerated examples. This fragmentary form allows Mikes to shift tone quickly from absurdity to accuracy, and to deliver punchy lines that double as both social critique and comic relief.
Language is simple, economical and conversational. Sentences often carry an ironic tilt, and the book relies on understatement and deadpan delivery rather than broad slapstick. The "manual" conceit, giving rules and instructions, serves as a comedic device: the reader knows from the outset that the rules are as much a parody of national self-regard as they are practical advice for newcomers.

Major Themes and Examples
A central preoccupation is British restraint and the complex etiquette that governs everyday interaction. Mikes highlights how politeness frequently masks reserve, how small talk functions as emotional weather-forecasting, and how insults are delivered with a smile or a shrug. The peculiar British relationship with privacy, queuing and fairness, and the almost ceremonial reverence for "tea" and conversational propriety are all treated as features of a civilization that prizes rules with a near-religious devotion.
Class and public behaviour receive gentle ribbing: how to address people properly, how to observe the subtle signals that distinguish "the English" at home from their continental caricatures, and how national self-myths, about stoicism, the monarchy, or cricket, are simultaneously comforting and comic. Mikes's humour comes from identifying the tiny rituals that look absurd from the outside but make perfect sense within their own system, and from the alien narrator's attempts to learn when to laugh and when to look grave.

Reception and Legacy
How to Be an Alien became a popular postwar comic classic and helped establish George Mikes as a chronicler of cultural mismatches. Its appeal lies in the balance of mockery and warmth: readers feel allowed to laugh at the English, but the laughter is not cruel. The book has been reprinted in various editions and has inspired other lighthearted national portraits and travel guides that use humour to teach cultural literacy.
Beyond entertainment, the book offers a historical snapshot of British life at a particular moment, capturing habits that have shifted over time while preserving a sense of continuity in national character. It remains a readable introduction to cross-cultural observation and a reminder that learning a country's manners can be as instructive as learning its language.