Book Review: The English by Jeremy Paxman

[diebitter]

This is a pretty interesting and amusing book, covering the nature and cultural history of the English. It's no heavyweight volume, easy to read, and covers some very enlightening aspects of how the English are, where they've come from, and how they are perceived by much of the world.

It covers stuff like their drinking habits (pretty much hardcore through the ages, despite the current belief that English binge-drinking is a new thing), fighting wars (with a major section devoted to WW2, and how the English were the moral victors but pretty much lost everything else in terms of world standing, status, and Empire), the embracing nature of being 'British' (embracing much like being an 'American' accomodates all sorts of types, races and backgrounds), the English attitude to Europe and beyond (there's some funny stuff about the French - my favourite being an English journo called Woodrow Wyatt checking into a Parisian hotel, and being asked very snottily by the deskmonkey how to spell his surname, to which he replied 'Waterloo-Ypres-Agincourt-Trafalgar-Trafalgar' - hehehe), and basically the strange and contrary nature of the English.

Recommended light non-fiction read if you're at all interested in how the English are and maybe how they came to be that way.