Euro Notes: Thoughts on the English Eccentric

What does it take to be a true English eccentric? The author of a new book on the subject has a few thoughts.

Here are a few examples of English eccentrics throughout history:

• Regency-era eccentric John "Mad Jack" Mytton, who had a pet giraffe that joined him for Sunday lunch via a trapdoor in his dining room.
• 18th-century landowner Charles Hamilton employed somebody to live in his garden as an ornamental gnome -- and forbade the man to cut his beard or nails, leave the grounds, talk to the servants or wear anything other than a camel-hair robe.
• The 21st-century Leopard Man of Skye, a pensioner tattooed from head to toe with leopard spots who lives half-naked in a converted sheep-pen.

Wow!

Oh, and what's a little post about English eccentricity without a quote on the subject from somebody famous? Here's some John Stuart Mill: "That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time."

There's the role of colorful, unfettered individuality here, and the idea of eccentricity is also tied to the idea of heterodoxy. Sometimes it's GOOD to march to the beat of a different drummer: "Invariably, these people are founts of creativity - and sometimes this can lead to great inventions and intellectual breakthroughs." Indeed.