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maffa303's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely brilliant! A hilarious look at the the English that is superbly written. It is hard to describe or explain this book in a way that does it justice but I would recommend it to anyone. Kate Fox approaches the task of understanding the English from a very academic angle but presents the data and writes in a brilliantly funny and approachable way.
If you are English then this book provides fantastically entertaining look at ourselves and you'll spend a lot of time thinking "oh yeah, I do that all the time" or "that is scarily accurate". And if you're not English, then I can see it being a useful tool for understanding some of our weird behaviours and tendencies as well as just being a great read.
If you are English then this book provides fantastically entertaining look at ourselves and you'll spend a lot of time thinking "oh yeah, I do that all the time" or "that is scarily accurate". And if you're not English, then I can see it being a useful tool for understanding some of our weird behaviours and tendencies as well as just being a great read.
linds_a_latte's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.5
Overall this book was informative and contained some interesting insights I wasn't fully aware of, but it did lack some contextual nuance and is fairly outdated. Despite Fox being a professional observer and attempting to cover ways in which various classes express themselves, she seems to become trapped in her own middle class echo chamber more often than not. Though anxiety is a key feature of the middle class, this book leaves the reader with the impression that members of it have fairly severe diagnosable anxiety disorders -- the real truth lies somewhere in the middle (ironically). It would have been great to have featured more viewpoints from across the class spectrum.
I feel that it would also have been useful to distinguish how most of the rules around interactions she describes are between acquaintances/strangers, not close friends/family. If the English were always as guarded and anxiety-ridden as she depicts even in close friendships/relationships, people would actually go insane. Yes, at its core, the book is largely accurate and insightful, but people reading it thinking it's a guide for closer relationships with English people will be sorely mislead.
The outdated references in the book are a bit cringey and should just be glossed over since they're almost entirely irrelevant to how people actually behave today (i.e., any time culture around "the internet" or "mobile phones" is mentioned). It was also somewhat off-putting how Fox also felt the need to call out "weird, icky wacky tribal cultures" (I am paraphrasing) multiple times throughout the book. I realise she more than likely meant for these descriptors to be tongue-in-cheek, but it comes off strangely immature and disrespectful.
I feel that it would also have been useful to distinguish how most of the rules around interactions she describes are between acquaintances/strangers, not close friends/family. If the English were always as guarded and anxiety-ridden as she depicts even in close friendships/relationships, people would actually go insane. Yes, at its core, the book is largely accurate and insightful, but people reading it thinking it's a guide for closer relationships with English people will be sorely mislead.
The outdated references in the book are a bit cringey and should just be glossed over since they're almost entirely irrelevant to how people actually behave today (i.e., any time culture around "the internet" or "mobile phones" is mentioned). It was also somewhat off-putting how Fox also felt the need to call out "weird, icky wacky tribal cultures" (I am paraphrasing) multiple times throughout the book. I realise she more than likely meant for these descriptors to be tongue-in-cheek, but it comes off strangely immature and disrespectful.
gemmascott's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
I read this book not long after it came out, back in the 2000s and it was a seminal work for me in terms of understanding British culture and society as a young teen trying to make her way in the adult world.
Reading back now, it’s certainly outdated (particularly given changes in technology, COVID etc.), but I still found myself cringing while realising “I do that!”
I’m not sure I agree entirely with the argument that the defining characteristic of our national identity is “social dis-ease” or that our recent shift towards the right and racism is just a blip (if so, it’s been happening since at least 2016), so I think I’d love to see an update to the book.
I also think you can tell that the author is rooted in her own middle class, Southern perspective so it would be interesting if she could collaborate with someone from a different background, or if another anthropologist could take on the mantle.
I gave this book an extra half a point for the narrator, who was fab!
Reading back now, it’s certainly outdated (particularly given changes in technology, COVID etc.), but I still found myself cringing while realising “I do that!”
I’m not sure I agree entirely with the argument that the defining characteristic of our national identity is “social dis-ease” or that our recent shift towards the right and racism is just a blip (if so, it’s been happening since at least 2016), so I think I’d love to see an update to the book.
I also think you can tell that the author is rooted in her own middle class, Southern perspective so it would be interesting if she could collaborate with someone from a different background, or if another anthropologist could take on the mantle.
I gave this book an extra half a point for the narrator, who was fab!
qwu's review against another edition
2.0
It was okay I think? Mm, I do find some of the quirks of English people cute, for example, the awkward, turtle-like character, but the class consciousness honestly can be rather frustrating. I normally try not to generalize, but a book like this seems doomed to generalize to some extent, which I suppose is also what makes it hard for readers to see it as something more serious, and academic maybe. To be fair though, like Kate Fox said in the book herself, it'd be hard to pin down a national character. Nonetheless, she's provided some very interesting points for non-English people to think about!
x0pherl's review against another edition
3.0
Fox does an interesting thing here: she combines a dry, academic, anthropological style with a funny, irreverent look at her own people. As an American reading this book, I sometimes felt a bit too "outside". I'd like to read a U.S. equivalent.
Here's a reasonable sample of what you'll get:
This was a good read, but not a great one. Probably would have been better left to pick up occasionally rather than to read cover to cover.
Here's a reasonable sample of what you'll get:
When the fork is being held in your left hand and used in conjunction with a knife or spoon, the prongs of the fork should always point downwards, not upwards. ‘Well-brought-up’ English people must therefore eat peas by spearing two or three peas with the downturned prongs of their fork, using their knife to hold the peas still while spearing, then pushing a few more peas on to the convex back of the fork with their knife, using the speared peas on the prongs as a sort of little ledge to help stop the slightly squashed, pushed peas on the back of the fork from sliding straight off. It is actually much easier than it sounds, and, when one describes the procedure in proper detail, marginally less idiotic than all the jokes about English pea-eating would suggest. Although it must be said that the lower-class pea-eating methods — turning the fork over and using the knife to push a larger quantity of peas onto the concave side of the fork, or even abandoning the knife, transferring the fork to your right hand, and shovelling up peas with it as though it were a spoon — are clearly rather more sensible, or at least more ergonomic, in that more peas per forkful are transported from plate to mouth. The socially superior spear-and-squash system carries no more than about eight peas at a time, at best, while the prongs-up, scoop-and-shovel technique can hold up to about thirteen, by my calculations — depending on the size of the fork, and the size of the peas, of course. (I really should get a life.)
There is obviously, then, no practical reason for Debrett’s and other etiquette guides to insist on the prongs-down method of pea eating. And again, it is hard to see how adopting the lower-class prongs-up practice could possibly have any adverse effects on one’s eating companions, so the consideration-for-others argument doesn’t wash either. We are forced to conclude that, like the knife-holding rule, the pea-eating rule is a class indicator and nothing more.
This was a good read, but not a great one. Probably would have been better left to pick up occasionally rather than to read cover to cover.
barrytho's review against another edition
5.0
Her conclusion that the English are pretty odd is well supported by her evidence. I enjoyed her pointing out bizarre social rules such as everyone pretending no one else exists on public transport and when it's acceptable to break that rule. Her bits on class are a little dated in places. But much fun is had at the expense of English social ineptitude.
diana_skelton's review against another edition
3.0
"Ethnic minorities are included, by definition, in any attempt to define Englishness. [...] Research tends to focus on the adaptation and adoption elements at the expense of the equally interesting and important issue of influence. This is odd: we acknowledge that short-term tourists can have a profound influence on their host cultures--indeed the study of the social processes involved has become a fashionable discipline in itself--but for some reason our academics seem less interested in the processes by which resident immigrant minority cultures can shape the behaviour patterns, customs, ideas, beliefs, and values of the countries in which they settle. [...] Where immigrants from former British colonies are concerned, perhaps the degree of acculturation demanded should match that which we achieved as uninvited residents in their cultures. Of all peoples, the English are surely historically the least qualified to preach about the importance of adapting to host-culture manners and mores. Our own track record on this is abysmal. Wherever we settle in any numbers, we not only create pockets of utterly insular Englishness, but also often attempt to impose our cultural norms and habits on the local population."
'We English are probably the least religious people on Earth. […] In 1941, George Orwell wrote that “the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries.” […] The Church of England is notoriously woolly-minded, tolerant to a fault, and amiably non-prescriptive. […] Whether or not one believes in God tends to be sidestepped. It's not quite in good taste. […] The Archbishop of Canterbury bemoaned the fact that “A tacit atheism prevails.” […] And the key word was tacit. We are not a nation of explicit unequivocal atheists. Nor are we agnostics. Both of these imply a degree of interest in whether or not there is a deity — enough either to reject or question the notion. Most English people are just not much bothered about it.'
"The English really are quite capable of Latin-Mediterranean warmth, enthusiasm, and hospitality; we can be just as direct and approachable and emotive and tactile as any of the so-called 'contact cultures'. It is just that these qualities are only consistently expressed in our interactions with animals. And, unlike our fellow Englishmen, animals are not embarrassed or put off by our un-English displays of emotion. No wonder animals are so important to the English: for many of us, they represent our only significant experience of open, unguarded, emotional involvement with another sentient being."
"The quintessentially English 'Typical!' combines huffy indignation with a sense of passive, resigned acceptance, an acknowledgement that things are bound to go wrong, that life is full of little irritations and difficulties and that one must simply put up with it. [...] But there is also almost a perverse sense of satisfaction. [...] We may have been thwarted and inconvenienced, but we have not been taken unawares. We knew this would happen. [...] We start learning these mantras in our cradles, and by the time we are adults, this Eeyorish view of the world is part of our nature. Recite these mantras in a decidedly humorous tone, adding the odd 'mustn't grumble' or 'never mind' or 'better make the best of it', and you will be well on your way to becoming English. Learn to greet every problem, from a piece of burnt toast to World War Three, with 'Typical!', somehow managing to sound simultaneously peeved, stoical, and smugly omniscient, and you will qualify as a fully acculturated English person."
'We English are probably the least religious people on Earth. […] In 1941, George Orwell wrote that “the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries.” […] The Church of England is notoriously woolly-minded, tolerant to a fault, and amiably non-prescriptive. […] Whether or not one believes in God tends to be sidestepped. It's not quite in good taste. […] The Archbishop of Canterbury bemoaned the fact that “A tacit atheism prevails.” […] And the key word was tacit. We are not a nation of explicit unequivocal atheists. Nor are we agnostics. Both of these imply a degree of interest in whether or not there is a deity — enough either to reject or question the notion. Most English people are just not much bothered about it.'
"The English really are quite capable of Latin-Mediterranean warmth, enthusiasm, and hospitality; we can be just as direct and approachable and emotive and tactile as any of the so-called 'contact cultures'. It is just that these qualities are only consistently expressed in our interactions with animals. And, unlike our fellow Englishmen, animals are not embarrassed or put off by our un-English displays of emotion. No wonder animals are so important to the English: for many of us, they represent our only significant experience of open, unguarded, emotional involvement with another sentient being."
"The quintessentially English 'Typical!' combines huffy indignation with a sense of passive, resigned acceptance, an acknowledgement that things are bound to go wrong, that life is full of little irritations and difficulties and that one must simply put up with it. [...] But there is also almost a perverse sense of satisfaction. [...] We may have been thwarted and inconvenienced, but we have not been taken unawares. We knew this would happen. [...] We start learning these mantras in our cradles, and by the time we are adults, this Eeyorish view of the world is part of our nature. Recite these mantras in a decidedly humorous tone, adding the odd 'mustn't grumble' or 'never mind' or 'better make the best of it', and you will be well on your way to becoming English. Learn to greet every problem, from a piece of burnt toast to World War Three, with 'Typical!', somehow managing to sound simultaneously peeved, stoical, and smugly omniscient, and you will qualify as a fully acculturated English person."