There is a persistent myth about the British: that they are a nation of stoics, with stiff upper lips, repressed emotions, and inactive lachrymal glands. Weeping Britannia--the first history of crying in Britain--comprehensively debunks this myth. Far from being a persistent element in the "national character", the notion of the British stiff upper lip was in fact the product of a relatively brief and militaristic period of the nation's past,...