From the office of ROLAND ROCCHICCIOLI

THE proverb “Manners makyth man” is historically attributed to William of Wykeham — the 14th-century Bishop of Winchester Cathedral and Chancellor of England to Edward 111 and Richard 11. It was William’s personal motto incorporated into his Coat-of-Arms.

Also, it is the motto of Winchester College — an English boarding school which William founded in 1382 as a feeder-school to New College, Oxford — which he established in the same year.

It was the most quoted proverb at boarding school and, serendipitously, sat in perfect tandem with my late mother, Beria: “You need to learn to keep a civil tongue in your head, young man!” Beria died 25 May 2007, and her voice has never been louder in my life. Now I realise she was a remarkable person.

Travelling on the train from Melbourne following football at the MCG was a group of three women with a child whom I estimate was about 4. She was occupied with a wretched tinny music box relentlessly playing, “Baa-Baa Black Sheep”, and “The wheels on the bus go round-and-round.” It was excruciating — tantamount to water torture. Incapable of suffering a nanosecond longer, I asked: “For how much longer are we going to listen to the nursery rhymes?”

The two women — one younger, one older — stared at me disdainfully, turned and looked at each other in synchronisation, then turned back without saying a word. The horrid child continued to play the nursery rhymes — alternately jumping up-and-down on her seat and slapping the adults on the tops of their heads.

The change in our behavioural ethos is cause to ponder — to reflect seriously on what time has brought to pass — ostensibly — by stealth. Once, such behaviour would have been less likely to occur — and censured. Parents would have chastised the child and appropriately apologised. We have become a rude and self-centred society. The lack of civility and regard is overwhelming. “Bugger you, Jack, I’m alright” is no longer a wounding insult but an acceptable form of serious modus operandi. If you don’t like — you can lump it!

Standing in a supermarket queue my line of vision was interrupted. I moved sideways by two steps to make an observation. The second I moved a belligerent, wizened, old Australian man — with bitterness blow-torched into his unprepossessing countenance — moved forward to take my place. I glared, in astonishment. He responded as best as he knew how: “Ya moved! Ya shoulda stopped in ya place!” Emboldened by his impertinence I labelled him “a silly old goat”. I was contemptuously dismissive of his remonstration: “I have no interest in talking with you, just” — and with a wave of my hand imperiously shooed him, and said — “go!” The silly man’s ears steamed forth!

The malaise phenomenon is not new. In 1957 Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, said in her first televised Christmas message: “The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honestly counted as foolishness, and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.”

A private secretary said to a nervous luncheon guest at Buckingham Palace: “Her Majesty asks only that you be civil.” We would do well to heed HM’s advice. The social war of words which taints our modern society is disturbing. Contact: [email protected]