Watching the English

A bestseller in the UK, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look English Society. Putting the English national character under her anthropological microscope, Fox finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments — even using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig — Fox discovers what these unwritten codes tell us about Englishness.

• Introduction — Anthropology at Home
• Part One: Conversation Codes
• The Weather
• Grooming-talk
• Humour Rules
• Linguistic Class Codes
• Emerging Talk-rules: The Mobile Phone
• Pub-talk
• Part Two: Behaviour Codes
• Home Rules
• Rules of the Road
• Work to Rule
• Rules of Play
• Dress Codes
• Food Rules
• Rules of Sex
• Rites of Passage
  



• Conclusion: Defining Englishness
• Epilogue

I had high hopes for this one. Ms. Fox has written books with Desmond Morris and I really would like to understand the British (in this case the English) people. Unfortunately, the book has a common theme of how the upper-middle class looks at the rest of the English society, which means leaving out lots of the society and having a pretty biased viewpoint.

After a first reading, you also realise that you're missing out on the explanation of how the British school system forms the English. In fact, children seems to be absent from the book, which probably reflect the upper-middle class view of them, but only leaves you wondering what more you're not informed on.

All in all, it was readable and from time to time amusing, but don't expect to understand the English or their social codes after reading this.