How to Be English

Zusatztext

<p><b>English culture is confused, muddled and often borrowed. The purpose of this book is to give the reader a complete grounding in the idiosyncrasies of the English and to pin down the absurdities and warmth of Englishness at its best.</b></p><p>Featured in this book are such established English cultural behemoths as the<b>Beatles, Big Ben and the Last Night of the Proms</b>alongside less<b>celebrated quirks</b>such as meat pies and the working mans haven, the allotment. Here we celebrate the bell-ringers and Morris dancers, bowler hats (the symbol of respectable Englishness) and cardigans (symbol of staid middle-class solidarity). We examine the brutality of Punch and Judy and our historic love of fairies, once so much a part of the English psyche that they were described as the British religion.</p><p>At once fond and irreverent, laudatory and curious,<i>How to Be English</i>might just teach us how to be English once again.</p>

Autorenportrait

<b>David Boyle</b>is the author of a series of books about current affairs and history, including<i>Blondels Song,</i>about the imprisonment of Richard the Lionheart,<i>Toward the Setting Sun</i>, about the discovery of America, and<i>Eminent Corporations,</i>about the BBC, Barclays and other great English companies. He has carried out an independent review for the Treasury, he has stood for Parliament, worked for think-tanks and written widely in the UK media. His most recent book was<i>Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?</i>(Fourth Estate).

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