The Last Word is the final chapter of Conseils a un Jeune Francais Partant Pour L'Angleterre by Andre Maurois, Editions Bernard Grasset, 1938.  If you want to read this short book from the beginning, scroll down to the first post and read upwards.  It's the modern way.   Above all, be joyful about the way England looks.  You will love the countryside that seems to have been drawn by Constable or Gainsborough.  You will love the hills, the valleys and the dunes.  You will love the amiably wild gardens and the mown and ordered lawns.  You will love London, which in its grey and gold fog, with the red stains of buses and the black stains of policemen, looks like an immense Turner. 

Since the war, at the Saint-Cyr Military College, there has been an English teacher who also prepares our young Frenchmen for their journeys to England.  He takes them to one side and explains certain infinitely detailed little mores.  These may seem minor, but to know them is to avoid distressing new English friends.  I’ll give a brief example of the kind of thing he teaches:  ‘Never forget that it’s a delicate compliment to your host not to smoke while you’re drinking his Port; it shows that you wouldn’t want to risk masking the flavours of such a rare wine with veils of smoke… Be polite by preparing to smoke a cigar by first smoking a cigarette … An English private soldier