Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour - Softcover

Fox, Kate

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857885082 ISBN 13: 9781857885088

Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing US, 2008

Synopsis

A runaway bestseller in the UK, Watching the English is now available in the U.S. for the first time! Witty and wise, Kate Fox reveals the quirks, habits, and foibles of the English people. Putting the national character under her microscope, Fox explores this strange and fascinating culture, governed by a complex set of unspoken rules and a bizarre code of conduct. Through anthropological analysis and a series of unorthodox experiments (often using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Fox discovers what these unwritten codes tell us about Englishness: the rules of weather-speak, the ironic-gnome rule, the reflex apology rule, the paranoid-pantomime rule, class anxiety tests, and the money-talk taboo, among others.Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful, and often hilarious look at English society.

About this title

Review:

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)

Book Description:

How does THE NAKED APE behave when he's dressed? The quirks and habits of the English laid bare.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing US
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1857885082
• ISBN 13: 9781857885088
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424