From Amazon

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

About the Author
Kate Fox, a social anthropologist, is Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford. 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.

Passing on to Dododumpling at the Cambridge meet next Saturday

RELEASE NOTES:

Molyneux spotted this on my wishlist and brought it along to the Cambridge meet today. Thanks! :) Funnily enough it had been a topic of conversation earlier in the afternoon, so it comes well-recommended by several BookCrossers.

A fantastic, funny book, which I read with much nodding of head and the odd giggle. It’s confirmed what I already knew – I’m English through and through! I dislike queue-jumpers (but would never say anything to anyone who broke the line), use weather-talk as an ice-breaker, and I love a nice cup of tea.

LindyB28 expressed an interest in this – I hope she’d still like to read it as I’m sending it to her as a surprise.

Update 16 April 2007 This book is making its way over to the West Midlands. Hope you enjoy it, LindyB28!

And another update ... my final one, honest! There's an interesting article about class in England here.

Received with thanks!

Watching the English is an anthropologist’s examination of English behaviour, searching for the tacit codes by which we live. Kate Fox’s work is rigorous and her prose style combines a lightness of touch with academic precision. She does not simply rely on observational humour as one finds in similar books; rather she observes, allows us to laugh, then places each aspect of English behaviour under the anthropologist’s microscope to diagnose what she describes as the English illness of social dis-ease and other rules including the importance of not being earnest.
My only quibble with the book was her preoccupation with class: sometimes debating the differences between lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle distracted her attention from searching for a core of Englishness.

My brother has enjoyed this book and is going to release it to his fellow VSO volunteers in Eritrea

Thoroughly enjoyed it, although at times it was a bit too accurate about English behaviours. It helped me to understand that its the whole country thats odd, not just me!!! It does get a bit bogged down in class comparisons and some of the comment was focused on fads or changing cultures, so may date the book quickly.

CAUGHT IN BIRMINGHAM WEST MIDLANDS UK

Hello, watching the English here. I know that I said I would write, but it's been complicated. I'm not longer in England I'm in Eritrea!

I met a lovely overgrown boy scout who persuaded me that I needed to get away from it all. After a difficult journey were, due to the fact that I didn't have a visa, I spent most of my time in a bag! On arrival in Asmara he began to make it up to me but taking me out and about. We were enjoying a cup of tea in Modka cafe when we bumped a charming friend of his. She introduced herself in such a confidence manner I found myself wondering if she was really English, but the London accent gave her away. She had heard of me and was keen see what I was all about. I was flattered, but using 'the understatement rule' I played down my popularity.

By the end of the the week my relationship with the boyscout was coming to an end and I had Rebka on my mind. After a few very boring days in her mailbox with other books (not so flattering) She pick me up leaving the other books behind (I knew that we had something special!) Since then I have been traveling back and forth between Serejeka and Asmara with her. We're getting on great! She is learning a lot about her own culture and I am learning from the comparisons that she makes with Eritrean culture. We are going a Keren for the weekend. I'm really looking forward to it.

I just thought that I would let you know that I'm in good hands and that I do think about you all from time to time. But you know how it is. You have to move on. I know that it's early days (page 138 out of 424) But this time I think that this time I have found the real thing. Be happy for me!

CAUGHT IN ASMARA ERITREA