Stiff Upper Lip
keep a stiff upper lip、もしくは単にstiff upper lipという古くからある表現（「感情の表現の自制（特に恐れか悲しみなどに対して）」）は、しばしば英国人を形容する表現だと言われます。
BBCは、この表現の歴史的経緯をたどりながら、果たしてそうなのかを検証する番組を１０月２日（現地時間）に放送します。（Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain is on BBC Two, Tuesday 2 October, 21:00 BST）あ〜、今すぐにでも英国に飛んで行きたい！ともあれ概要（PR）がBBCのサイトにありますので、これでがまん、がまん。本文へどうぞ！（UG）
The end of the stiff upper lip?
Unblinking fortitude in the face of adversity and hardship - or the suppression of boiling emotion - is referred to in the UK as stiff upper lip. But is this really a distinctively British characteristic and is it still firmly in place, asks Ian Hislop.
There was a moment when I stood in the pouring rain watching the Royal Flotilla during the Diamond Jubilee when I thought I might be on to something.
After five hours getting completely soaked, the people next to me were still happily pointing out the little boats that had been to Dunkirk or the motor boat that had taken part in the Normandy landings or leading a huge cheer for a barge containing an Indian band in kilts playing the bagpipes.
Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain is on BBC Two, Tuesday 2 October, 21:00 BST
The weather in Britain does tend to bring out a sort of mad, masochistic defiance in people. But on this occasion I thought that everyone, from the elderly Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who refused to sit down, to the massed choirs who belted out their anthems with dripping hair and running mascara, to the crowds with their umbrellas and thermos flasks of tea, was taking part in a grand pageant of stoicism.
The fact that it resulted in the duke being hospitalised and various boat crews being treated for hypothermia only seemed to add to its appeal.
I enjoyed the whole thing greatly even though I was aware of the fact that it was slightly bonkers. Over centuries, the British have come to be seen by others and to see themselves in terms of reserve, resilience and restraint.
But this has not always been the case. When the Dutch scholar Erasmus came to London at the turn of the 16th Century he wrote home in amazement, describing how the English spend the whole time kissing each other. "Wherever you move there is nothing but kisses," he noted.
