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The letter to your American cousins, attributed to a Mr John Cleese and quoted by Cwm here, led me to think it's time, yet again, to debunk a little linguistic myth. As you know, I'm a keen scholar and deeply interested in things human, and I came across the following in New Hart's Rules (Oxford University Press, 2005):

For most verbs that end with -ize or -ise, either termination is accept­able in British English. The ending -ize has been in use in English since the 16th century, and is not an Americanism, although it is the usual form in American English today….

Oxford University Press has traditionally used -ize spellings. … They were favoured on both phonetic and etymological grounds: -ize corres­ponds more closely to the Greek root of most -ize verbs, -izo.

For some words, however, -ise is obligatory: first, when it forms part of a larger word element such as -cise (= cutting), -mise (= sending), -prise (= taking), or -vise (= seeing); and second, when it corresponds to nouns with -s- in the stem, such as advertise and televise.

Here is a list of the commoner words in which an -ise ending must be used in both British and American English:

advertise

advise

apprise

arise

chastise

circumcise

comprise

compromise

demise

despise

devise

disenfranchise

disguise

enfranchise

enterprise

excise

exercise

improvise

incise

merchandise

premise

prise [open]

revise

supervise

surmise

surprise

televise

In British English, words ending -yse (analyse, paralyse) cannot also be spelled -yze. In American English, however, the -yze ending is usual (analyze, paralyze).

So now you know.