However ambivalent they may be about American culture in general, the British often pay more attention — and homage — to American art than Americans do. BBC Radio 3 has just finished airing a year of American music, while the London home of the Royal Shakespeare Company hosted a festival in which jazz, gospel, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon were presented as the cultural touchstones of the twentieth century. Even the Royal Air Force component of the yearly “Royal Tournament” now marches to the American John Williams’s music from Star Wars.

Of course, as the British often complain, a second form of American culture has conquered the United Kingdom as well. Sainsbury’s supermarkets offer Classic Cola with “original American taste”; local fast food offers New Jersey chicken cafes, Seattle coffee houses, and Texas barbecue restaurants (advertised as “mighty fine eats”).