In 1987, a man named Douglas Bath entered a bank in suburban London, pulled out a handgun and demanded money. The robbery was foiled, however, when a customer, outraged that the would-be robber had jumped the queue, told him to "bugger off" and go back to the end of the line.

Stunned by this rebuke, Bath meekly left the bank empty-handed and was arrested a short while later. The man who reproached him, one John Fallows, was briefly a national hero-not for thwarting the armed holdup, you understand, but for defending the dignity of the British queue.

I mention this here to make the point that politeness and a quiet consideration for others are the very cornerstones of British life and you disregard them at your own peril. This is a country where if you accidentally crash into someone in the street or conk them with your umbrella or impede their progress in any way at all, they will very probably apologize to you; where someone proceeding along a row of seated people in a crowded theater will murmur, "Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry," to each in turn; where someone you've seriously inconvenienced will say, "Honestly don't worry about it. We were thinking of replacing that carpet."

Deference is such a fundamental part of British life that few conversations could start without it. Almost any encounter with a stranger begins with the words, "I'm terribly sorry, but" followed by a request of some sort-"could you tell me the way to Brighton," "help me find a shirt my size," "get your steamer trunk off my foot." When you've fulfilled their request, they invariably offer a hesitant smile and say sorry again, apologizing for taking up your time or carelessly leaving their foot where your steamer trunk clearly needed to go.

Courtesy manifests itself in a thousand unexpected ways in Britain-in warnings painted on London streets telling you to look left or look right before stepping off the curb, and in the almost total absence of the sound of car horns no matter how bad or irritating the traffic. It surfaces in the way drivers will pause to let you change lanes or pull out into traffic. It shows itself in the traditional call at closing time in pubs-"Time, gentlemen, please!" and "Could we have your glasses, please!"-and the way customers obligingly convey their empties to the bat upon departing. It can lend a touch of elegance to public notices, of which my favorite was the sign over the sink in the men's room of the British Museum, which said, "For Casual Ablutions Only-Please."

Nothing better epitomizes the British genius for orderly public behavior than the art of queuing. The British may have lost an empire and their role at the center of world affairs. Their industries may be in terminal decline and small, obscure nations may now routinely embarrass them at cricket. But give them a line and ask them to wait patiently and no one can touch them.

I remember a few years ago arriving at a railroad station to find just two of the dozen or so ticket windows were open (as a rule in Britain, no matter how many windows there are in a bank or rail station, only two of them will be open, except at very busy times, when just one will be open) and both were occupied. In other countries one of two things would have happened. There would have been a crush of customers at each window demanding simultaneous attention, or else there would have been two slow-moving lines, each full of gloomy people convinced the other line was moving faster.

Here in Britain, however, the waiting customers had spontaneously come up with a much more sensible and ingenious arrangement. They had formed a single line a few feet back from both windows. When either position became vacant, the customer at the head of the line would step up to it and the rest of the line would shuffle forward a space. It was a wonderfully fair and democratic approach and the amazing thing was that no one had commanded it or even suggested it. It just happened.