Watching the English (Kate Fox)

Anthropologist Kate Fox sets about decoding the “Hidden rules of English behaviour”, with hilarious consequences. This little gem of a book is packed with typical English humour, and delivers some quite cunning observations about the behaviour traits that are quintessential to Englishness. Applying a truly scientific method, the author proceeds with some toe-curling field experiments (at least to a true Englishman...), like queue-jumping. Whilst she observes that Britain is a political construction and a cultural patchwork, she also notes (as Orwell did before her) that such differences “fade away the moment any two Britons are confronted by a European”. She goes on to portray England as a “highly class-conscious culture”, and the English as a nation of “curtain twitchers”, having “rules about complaining and making a fuss”, afflicted with “social dis-ease”, “home-fixation” and “privacy-obsession”, practicing “assertion by negation” and allowing “the triumph of etiquette over reason”, who value “the importance of not being earnest”, are “what they do not eat”, have a “mastery of wit, irony and understatement”, take “great vicarious pleasure in their pets’ uninhibited behaviour” and whose male specimen are allowed to “express [only] three emotions” (that is, surprise, anger and elation) in their efforts to socialise, whilst its female subjects “achieve intimacy by other means, such as gossip, compliments, and reciprocal disclosure”. Even if she sounds quite unforgiving to her own people, I have to admit that I would agree with her on all counts. Having lived for 3 years in London, I finally found in this book a reasoned analysis of the English peculiarities I find in turn quite enjoyable and/or frankly frustrating (this Froggie is still trying to master the use of understatement…). Ms Fox, as a true Englishwoman, certainly does have a mastery of wit herself, and her book will bring a smile on your face with almost every page turned (just to mention a few nuggets – “An Englishman’s home is his castle but the real king is his dog”, “satire is what the English have instead of revolutions and uprisings” and “one of the Ten Commandments of Englishness: when in doubt, joke”). Whether you enjoy the company of the Rosbifs (like this Frog) or dislike them, read this book – it will only make them (even) more likeable. And if you are English, read it too… just for the cringe factor ;-)