English Without Tears is a 1944 British romantic comedy film directed by Harold French and starring Michael Wilding, Penelope Dudley-Ward and Lilli Palmer.

In July 1939, the top-hatted deliveryman from a Fortune and Weedon[5] carriage takes a basket of quail to the tradesman's entrance of Beauclerk House.

[6] An elaborate process brings the birds to the dinner plates of Lady Christabel Beauclerk and her nephew, Sir Cosmo Brandon, a British delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva.

A fanatical bird expert, Lady Christobel identifies the "quail" as a thrush and sends the "tortured friend" away in horror.

In Geneva, the party meets Polish political cartoonist Felix Dembowski and French romantic novelist François de Freycinet.

Lady Christabel's outraged demands for sanctuaries and control of oil pollution are perceived as an attempt at British imperial expansion.

De Freycinet and Dembowski vie for Joan's affections by trying to be her top pupil, taking extra lessons from Knudsen.

The three men plan to confront her, but cowardice prevails and at The Sanctuary's bar they drunkenly make up their differences and swear off women.

On his bicycle, a top-hatted Fortune and Weedon man delivers a basket of canned spam to Beauclerk House for the New Year's Eve United Nations Dance, where several of the film's couples come together.

He later called the film: A bit of wickedness on Tolly de Grunwald’s part because it wasn’t good and made no real sense.

[7]The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald have produced here a subtle comedy of manners truly in the tradition which reached scintillating heights with Frederick Lonsdale's plays.

Margaret Rutherford as Lady Beauclerk and Roland Culver as her Foreign Office nephew contribute most, but there are efficient performances from Michael Wilding, Penelope Ward, Lilli Palmer and others.

"[8] The Glasgow Herald felt the film suffered in comparison to Rattigan and de Grunwald's previous success, French Without Tears, and regretted the absence of director Anthony Asquith's "light, witty touch”.

Roland Culver is beautifully suave in a small part, and Margaret Rutherford has a nice bit of philanthropic lunacy to do".