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The phrase "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" is a generic name used in the United Kingdom for a person with strongly

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

political views who writes

letters to newspapers A letter to the editor (LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional mai ...

or the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

in moral outrage. ''Disgusted'' is the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

of the supposed letter writer, who is a resident of the stereotypically middle-class town of

Royal Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, in

southeast England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, ...

. The term may have originated with either the 1944 BBC radio programme ''

Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh ''Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh'' was a comedy show broadcast from 1944 to 1950 and 1951 to 1954 by BBC radio and in 1950–51 by Radio Luxembourg. It was written by and starred Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne as officers in a fictional RAF stati ...

'', a regular writer to ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' or an editor of the letters page of a local newspaper, the ''Tunbridge Wells Advertiser''. In later times, the term has continued to be used to describe conservative letter writers who complain to newspapers about a subject that they morally or personally disagree with. It is often used in relation to news stories regarding Royal Tunbridge Wells. Some residents of the town have criticised the term as obsolete, but others continue to embrace it.

Origins

A "stuffy, reactionary image" was associated with the town of

Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. T ...

by the novelist

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...

in his 1908 book ''

A Room with a View ''A Room with a View'' is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society a ...

'', in which the character Charlotte Bartlett says, "I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind the times". Tunbridge Wells was later granted a

royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria a ...

in 1909 and renamed "Royal Tunbridge Wells". The

BBC radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering ...

show ''

'', first broadcast in 1944, is sometimes stated in newspaper reports to have popularised the term ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' for correspondence to newspapers. There were also suggestions that the use of ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' came from one regular contributor of letters to ''

'' in the early 20th century, who would use a particular style of writing to oppose people and organisations who came to his attention. Despite being described as the "quintessential Englishman" because of his writing style and having his letters regularly published, his identity was never known because he would only identify himself as "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells". However, some reports have popularly rumoured that this person was a retired colonel who served in the British Indian Army during the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

. In 2014, the ''

Kent and Sussex Courier The ''Kent and Sussex Courier'' is an English regional newspaper, published in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The paper was the result of an amalgamation of a number of Kent and East Sussex local newspapers, and hence has always been published in ...

'' claimed that the originator of ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' was the retired British Army colonel George Thomas Howe, who had developed a skill in writing letters about

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

during five years in the

Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tran ...

. Reportedly, his letters were popular reading and helped to sell newspapers that published them. According to the Royal Tunbridge Wells historian and former newspaper editor Frank Chapman, the phrase has a different origin, starting in the 1950s with the staff of the former ''Tunbridge Wells Advertiser''. During the paper's final months of publication, the editor Nigel Chapman, alarmed at a lack of letters from readers, insisted his staff write a few to fill space. One signed his simply "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells", and this was then adopted in all future staff letters until the newspaper ceased publication in 1954. The term ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' was later used to stereotype Royal Tunbridge Wells as a town of retired

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

colonels who would write such letters to newspapers. Examples of letters of this type sent to the ''Advertiser'' may be found which pre-date these origins, such as the following from 1924: Letters written with a tone of incensed moral outrage have become commonly described as "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" letters, regardless of the writer's place of origin. For example, the actor

Michael Caine Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films in a career spanning seven decades, and is considered a British film ico ...

once said: "I don't want to sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I do think there should be some sort of national service for young men". People writing them have been claimed by commentators to be readers of the '' Daily Mail'', despite the original letters not originating in that publication.

Later use

The magazine '' Private Eye'' made regular use of the ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' pseudonym to satirise the stereotypical conservative

Middle England The phrase "Middle England" is a socio-political term which generally refers to middle class or lower-middle class people in England who hold traditional conservative or right-wing views. Origins The origins of the term "Middle England" are ...

er, and it became a

running joke A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling. Though they are similar, catchphrases are not ...

for several years. In 1978,

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

called its new listener feedback programme ''Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells'', though it was renamed '' Feedback'' in 1979. This was following Radio 4 broadcasting the ''

Take It From Here ''Take It from Here'' (often referred to as ''TIFH'', pronounced – and sometimes humorously spelt – "TIFE") is a British radio comedy programme broadcast by the BBC between 1948 and 1960. It was written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, a ...

'' radio series in 1954 where "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" was prominently featured. In politics, the people behind "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" letters have strong conservative views and are commonly viewed to support the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

. However, most

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

(UKIP) members in the party's early days were viewed by commentators as being "'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' pensioners", of whom the UKIP leader

Nigel Farage Nigel Paul Farage (; born 3 April 1964) is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021) from 2 ...

stated in 2013 "... the people in it KIPand who voted for it were in the main 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'. I mean, you look down the membership list in 1994, anyone below a half colonel was a nobody..." In 1980, the BBC Radio 2 broadcaster

Terry Wogan Sir Michael Terence Wogan (; 3 August 1938 – 31 January 2016) was an Irish radio and television broadcaster who worked for the BBC in the UK for most of his career. Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, his BBC Radio 2 week ...

chaired an "It's Your BBC" meeting at Royal Tunbridge Wells' Assembly Hall Theatre. A report in ''The Times'' suggested the BBC had staged the meeting in the town in the hope that "Disgusted" would reveal himself. In 2006, the author and magistrate Connie St Louis singled out the "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" stereotype as a powerful British middle-class movement, saying "they are part of the group with the same concerns, so they have a sense of belonging". In 2013,

Nigel Cawthorne Nigel Cawthorne (born 27 March 1951 in Wolverhampton) is a British freelance writer of fiction and non-fiction, and an editor. According to Cawthorne's website, he has written more than 150 books on a wide range of subjects. He also contribute ...

published ''Outraged of Tunbridge Wells'', a compilation of letters to the ''Tunbridge Wells Advertiser'' that were viewed as being in the style of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" from the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

archives. Critical review of the book has stated that the "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" style displayed an art of letter writing that has continued despite other things in the world changing. Residents of Royal Tunbridge Wells have also expressed displeasure in a manner similar to the "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" stereotype in relation to the

Waitrose Waitrose & Partners (formally Waitrose Limited) is a brand of British supermarkets, founded in 1904 as Waite, Rose & Taylor, later shortened to Waitrose. It was acquired in 1937 by employee-owned retailer John Lewis Partnership, which still se ...

supermarket chain refusing to open a store in the town while neighbouring "downmarket" towns of

Tonbridge Tonbridge ( ) is a market town in Kent, England, on the River Medway, north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, south west of Maidstone and south east of London. In the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling, it had an estimated populat ...

and Crowborough both did have one. In 2016, during the United Kingdom referendum on the British membership in the European Union, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' used Royal Tunbridge Wells as its base for reporting on the referendum. The town was chosen because it was seen as the "quintessentially English town" due to the ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' phrase. Although most Americans would not fully understand the reference, the town was nonetheless considered a symbol of middle England. The town is a Conservative stronghold and was the only council area in

to vote by a majority for Remain during

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...

Criticism

In 2009, some residents of Royal Tunbridge Wells called the tag "inappropriate" and "stereotypical" and asked the town to drop association with it in favour of ''Delighted of Tunbridge Wells''. However, there was opposition to this campaign by other residents, some of whom wrote to newspapers in the "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" style arguing they preferred ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells''. Local merchants at the town's information centre pointed out that tourists were buying twice as many goods bearing ''Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'' than with ''Delighted of Tunbridge Wells''.

References

External links

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells
(local website) {{Royal Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells Conservatism in the United Kingdom English phrases English culture Letter writers Stereotypes of the middle class Class-related slurs Anonymity pseudonyms

Origins

Later use

Criticism

See also

References

External links