A. G. Gardiner once saw a lift attendant toss out a passenger for not saying ‘please’. The attendant was fined, and though Gardiner sympathised he thought this was right. He regretted the decline in courtesy since the Great War, but he was sure neither physical violence nor the force of law was the answer.

Gardiner suggested that the affronted attendant might have done better to respond with exaggerated politeness rather than physical force. He reminded readers that when an acquaintance haughtily refused to give way to Lord Chesterfield in the street, the statesman simply walked around him, thereby proving which of them really was a gentleman.

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