Mastering the Art of Humour

Humour enlivens our daily lives, adding sparkle, flavour and zest to what might otherwise be humdrum experiences. But humour is far from monolithic, its diverse forms appealing to us in different, yet scintillating ways.

Thankfully, Anna Nolan had the good fortune to be born with humour encoded in her DNA, this momentous event having occurred in her native Poland. She was, however, shut out of the country in 1981, when the Polish authorities imposed martial law to forestall a threatened Soviet invasion. A teacher of English in Warsaw hitherto, Anna was then in London, taking several advanced qualifications in the language to complement her two university degrees. England was thus where she got stranded all those years ago.

To her utter delight, she soon discovered that, like her own brand of humour, the British variety often used satire to poke fun at the absurdities of everyday life and to mock public institutions. In the Poland of her youth, suffering in the grip of a communist dictatorship, anti-communist satire was widely used both as a coping mechanism and as a form of resistance. She, therefore, looked at the world around her through a satirical lens.

Britain, of course, had no cause to deride an imperialist oppressor such as Russia, Poland’s detested neighbour, but Anna quickly found that the British enjoyed mocking authority, social conventions, class – and even themselves – employing not only witty satire but also irony, parody and self-deprecation, all of which she, too, had been blessed with. She was thus in her element!

Masterpieces such as Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister resonated with her hugely because she had always expressed herself through satire, parody, irony, and jocularity – not to forget self-deprecation. This is why she didn’t have to try to infuse her writing with humour: it simply always is. In fact, she can’t help it – even when she writes about English grammar, her all-consuming passion.

So it was entirely natural for her two books, Lakeland Larks, Laughter and Lunacies of an Unmotorised Lake District Walker, and its sequel, More Lakeland Larks, Laughter and Lunacies (both published in 2024), to be shot through with humour. Since climbing mountains and leading a fellwalking group in the Lake District, her home and playground, are Anna’s other passions, she could have written about what an amazing mountaineer and a fabulous guide she is – but where’s the fun in that? Instead, she seized on her mishaps, missteps and misadventures, laughing at herself heartily throughout.

Moreover, she can mine a rich vein of hilarity not accessible to native Britons, namely the fact that she is a foreigner and thus liable to get flummoxed by some aspects of British culture. Which, after some 44 years in England, she – unsurprisingly – hardly ever does. But the point is that she can pretend to, and she does make fun of the hilarities which can arise out of culture clashes between native Britons and a foreigner in their midst, drawing on her past experiences in this wonderful country and often resorting to exaggeration and hyperbole to amplify a comedic effect.

In this, she is greatly aided by the structure of both books, which are anecdotal in character and have no particular chronology, plot or characters. Instead, there is only the hapless Polish Anna, who has never managed to learn to drive (while pushing her poor driving instructor to the edge of a mental breakdown), who suffers from severe deficiencies in the domestic-goddess department, who is a self-confessed technophobe barely able to operate a ‘dumbphone’ (which she calls her ‘granny phone’), and who, despite fancying herself as a Lake District expert, can get herself, and the walking group she leads, into all sorts of scrapes in the mountains.

And, because Anna wanted to entertain her readers with a variety of jocular musings and satirical asides, she chose a loose structure and adopted a chatty tone, talking to her audience in a direct and informal manner. In so doing, she poked fun not only at her own Lakeland larks and lunacies but also at a wide range of other topics, including the quirks of human nature, the comicality of jargon, the ineptness and duplicity of politicians, the Christmas excesses in the western world, Covid conspiracy theories – and even some very funny grammatical errors, she being a grammarian.

In short, rather than being woven into her writing, comedy and satire dictate the tone of virtually everything she writes. And not only in prose: Anna also has a penchant for comic verse – often irreverent – which she started writing in Poland. But her facility for funny ditties has transferred seamlessly from one language to another, and both her Lakeland books are generously sprinkled with frolicsome rhymes, which, like her prose, reflect her Polish ebullience.

In Britain, her amusing ditties have been likened to the humorous poems written by Pam Ayres, and Anna was delighted when some were broadcast on the BBC and published by Lighten Up Online, Daily Squib, Third Age Matters and The Keswick Reminder.

Believing in the value of constructive criticism, Anna had always sought feedback on her writing and then acted on the received suggestions: woe betide those authors who imagine that their work cannot be improved. Gratifyingly, humour seems to resonate with British readers, contributing to the success of Anna’s books, although she is always trying to ensure that her Polish jocularity doesn’t miss the mark. Thankfully, ‘the natives’ seem to find her books laugh-out-loud funny.

As for proffering advice to other authors, she wouldn’t like to presume that it is her place to offer suggestions to talented writers, but she has been asked to do so. It seems to her that intelligent humour has to be rooted in the keen observation of people and their follies, foibles, habits, quirks and proclivities – if the readers will excuse the tautology here. Equally penetrating scrutiny should, of course, be applied to all sorts of institutions and authorities – and even to political systems. Thankfully, most Britons seem to have been born with the metaphorical funny bone!