Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

In defence of self-deprecation

Modesty is not a sign of weakness

Hugh Grant: the master of bogus self deprecation Photo: Getty Images. 
issue 29 March 2014

I think the ancient English art of self–deprecation may be dying.

I don’t mean self-deprecation in its distorted and most exported form: pug-eyed rogues like Hugh Grant getting away with murder — more usually infidelity — by grinning and rubbing their hair. That’s different. That’s ‘bogus self-deprecation’, as my friend Stuart Reid used to say.

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