Reviews

Watching The English: the hidden rules of the English

by Kate Fox

Book Details Paperback: 420 pages (April 11, 2005) Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Paperbacks Language: English ISBN: 0340818867 Other Editions: Hardcover

About the Author: Kate Fox, a social anthropologist, is Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford and a Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Research. Following an erratic eductaion in England, America, Ireland and France, she studied anthropology and philosophy at Cambridge.

Her work involves monitoring and assessing global sociocultural trends, and has included research, publications and broadcasts on many aspects of human behaviour including: social aspects of drinking, sex differences, flirting, body image, pub culture, gossip, eating, health issues, taboos, horseracing, mobile phones, email, stress, drugs, crime, violence and disorder.

Book Description: The hardback bestseller now in paperback: 'An entertaining and clever book. Do read it.'

Synopsis: 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 ironicgnome 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.

Reviews:

Birmingham Post

'Watching the English'... will make you laugh out oud ("oh God. I do that!") and cringe simaltaneously ("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 forboth the English and those who look at us and wonder why we do what we do. Now they'll know'.

The Times

‘Amusing . . . entertaining.'

Oxford Times

‘Fascinating reading.'

Daily Mail

'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'.

The Sunday Times

'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'