Books : Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

Rating: - A collection of clichés
The book is written from a supposedly scientific point of view, but there is little in the way of real evidence to back up any of the 'findings'.

It is more a book about the south-eastern English than the English as a whole. Little of what was revealed rang true, instead seeming to be a melange of longstanding clichés about the English character, which as a rule are clichés about the south eastern English.

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Rating: - Not bad.
There are some very funny parts to this description of the English although the time I wasn't compleatly convinced. Then I found myself initiating a surreal and compleatly pointless conversation about the weather and it turns out I'm more English than I thought. But this is a bit more in depth than the usual observations about the weather and other English stereotypes. It does succeed in looking at the English as a distinctive tribe with a baffling and intricate culture and highlights aspects of English life that we assume are or should be universal but really aren't. It's definatly worth a read and manages to avoid the gushing pride of the likes of Bill Bryson or the irritating superiority of Paxman. It manages to be critcal of our more silly afflictions such as the near permenant embarrassement or the never ending stream of jokes. It probably is a bit selfindulgent if you aren't anthropologically incline but never mind, you might learn something.

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Rating: - Excellent book on rule following behaviour
Yesterday five migrant workers were killed in a head-on collision on a road in England. They were passing a long line of trucks and ran straight into a truck coming against them.

Reading Ms Fox's book will not only tell you about the English (who are crazy) but will also explain how an apparently inexplicable accident like this can happen.

I worked for a while in London and really wished I read this book before I went. FA Hayek wrote: 'Man is a rule following animal' and the rules in England are really odd.

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Rating: - A tribal talent for avoiding fuss
"Really, I don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to remote corners of the world and get dysentery and malaria in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when the weirdest, most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep." - Kate Fox

WATCHING THE ENGLISH, by social anthropologist Kate Fox, is an engaging, perceptive, informative, and entertaining treatise on English (as opposed to "British") behavior in all aspects of life. At times, the author's style seems tongue-in-cheek. However, as she herself is English, this is simply a manifestation of her tribe's trait not to be seen as being too earnest and, while the subject is to be taken seriously, not too seriously.

In what must have been a prodigious research effort (yielding 416 pages of small type), Fox characterizes English behavior and attitudes as they relate to weather, social small talk, humor, linguistics, pubs, mobile phones, home, queues, transportation, work, play, dress, food, sex, secondary education, marriage, funerals, religion, and recurring "calendrical rites" (e.g. birthdays and holidays). Within these categories, Kate addresses everything from the pets and jam to the furniture that the English favor. And, since class consciousness is irrevocably embedded in the national social fabric, all is explained relative to the various classes: lower- and upper-working, lower-, middle- and upper-middle, and upper. As an example, when it comes to one's automobile:

"A scrupulously tidy car indicates an upper-working to middle-middle owner, while a lot of rubbish, apple cores, biscuit crumbs, crumpled bits of paper and general disorder suggests an owner from either the top or the bottom of the social hierarchy. (Further,) the upper and upper-middle classes of both sexes have a high tolerance of dog-related dirt and disorder ... The interiors of their cars are often covered in dog hair, and the upholstery scratched to bits by scrabbling paws."

Kate's observations stress the importance of self-effacement, fair-play, moderation, compromise, courtesy, modesty, desire for privacy, polite egalitarianism, irony, ambiguity, and hypocrisy in English behavior. However, to me, the single most important concept to be absorbed from WATCHING THE ENGLISH is that of "negative politeness", which explains the notorious English reserve, and:

"... which is concerned with other people's need not to be intruded or imposed upon (as opposed to 'positive politeness', which is concerned with their need for inclusion and social approval). We judge others by ourselves, and assume that everyone shares our obsessive need for privacy - so we mind our own business and politely ignore them."

After all, one mustn't "make a fuss".

I myself was born in Milwaukee. My paternal grandfather emigrated from central Europe, and his family was German-speaking. Yet, as I read this book, my reaction was: "Wow! That describes me perfectly." Perhaps this is because I was an Englishman in a previous incarnation or, more plausibly, because English values persist in the core, WASP, sub-culture of the country descended from the thirteen, original, Anglo-American colonies.

WATCHING THE ENGLISH is a must-read for anyone who loves England, and is an obligatory duo with Jeremy Paxman's THE ENGLISH: A PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE.

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Rating: - everybody should read this book!
This book was recommended to me and I have since gone on to recommend it to everyone!
It is a lovely ethnographic account made readable to the layman and laced with humour. I could have been shorter, yes I accept that but personally I was so sad when I'd read it all that I wished it had been longer. By far the best book I've read in years.

I hope that Kate Fox considers producing some of her other accademic work in this format to make it accessable to all.

We all think that we have free will and make our own decisions and yet actually we often operate within closly defined limits, set by our class and our type.

Fabulous book for everyone who is English and for everyone who isn't.