A few years ago the publisher and I were tourists in London, and we stopped to look at a lovely old churchyard in Hampstead or somewhere. The kindly grey-haired old vicar saw us looking at his tombstones, and came over to tell us a few interesting stories about local history. Then, with no apparent segue, he launched into a tirade about what savages the Irish were, how they were making England uninhabitable and worse. Now, to be fair, this was during the time when some IRA members were planting bombs in British cities, so his annoyance was not unjustifiable, but he went way over the top with accusations of superstition and illiteracy against the whole Irish nation. We went on our way quickly at that point, terrified that he would introduce himself and we would have to cop to our shared Irish surname.
-more-