Short description
The hardback bestseller now in paperback: 'An entertaining and clever book. Do read it.' -
Long description
In Watching The English anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more ...Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.
Product details
- Publisher:
- Hodder & Stoughton Paperbacks
- ISBN:
- 9780340818862
- Publication date:
- April 2005
- Length:
- 197mm
- Width:
- 131mm
- Thickness:
- 28mm
- Weight:
- 290g
- Edition:
- New title
- Pages:
- 432
- Readership:
- General
Review
'She has not only compiled a comprehensive list of English qualities, she has examined them in depth and wondered how we came to acquire them. Her book is a delightful read.' -- The Sunday Times 'I loved the section on mobile-phone etiquette. Shrewd ... I liked the chapter on English humour. This is an entertaining, clever book. Do read it and then pass it on.' -- Daily Telegraph 'Amusing ... entertaining.' -- The Times 'Watching the English ... will make you laugh out loud ( Oh God. I do that! ) and cringe simultaneously ( Oh God. I do that as well. ). This is a hilarious book which just shows us for what we are ... beautifully-observed. It is a wonderful read for both the English and those who look at us and wonder why we do what we do. Now they'll know.' -- Birmingham Post 'Fascinating reading.' -- Oxford Times 'An absolutely brilliant examination of English culture and how foreigners take as complete mystery the things we take for granted.' -- Jennifer Saunders, The Times 'If you like this kind of anthropology (and I do) there is a wealth of it to enjoy in this book. Her observations are acute...fortunately she doesn't write like an anthropologist but like an English woman -with amusement, not solemnity, able to laugh at herself as well as us.' -- Daily Mail