Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

The phrase "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" is a generic name used in the United Kingdom for a person, usually with strongly conservative political views, who writes letters to newspapers or the BBC in a tone of moral outrage. "Disgusted" is the pseudonym of the supposed letter writer, who is a resident of the stereotypically middle-class town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in the south-east of England. The term may have originated either with the 1944 BBC radio programme Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, a regular writer to The Times or with 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 Some residents of the town have criticised the term as being outdated, but several continue to embrace it.

A "stuffy, reactionary image" was associated with Tunbridge Wells by the novelist E. M. Forster in his 1908 book A Room with a View, in which the character Charlotte Bartlett says, "I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind the times". The town of Tunbridge Wells was later granted a royal charter by King Edward VII in 1909 and renamed "Royal Tunbridge Wells".

The BBC radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, 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 The Times 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" 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. In 2014, the Kent and Sussex Courier claimed that the originator of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" was the retired British Army colonel George Thomas Howe, who had developed a skill for letter writing after five years of observing apartheid in the Union of South Africa. Reportedly, his letters were popular reading and helped to sell newspapers that published them.

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