Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Penguin (1999), Edition: New edition, 320 pages
Description
Not so long ago, everybody knew who the English were. They were polite, unexcitable, reserved, and had hot-water bottles instead of a sex life. As the dominant culture in a country that dominated an empire that dominated the world, they had little need to examine themselves and ask who they were. But something has happened. A new self-confidence seems to have taken hold in Wales and Scotland, while others try to forge a new relationship with Europe. The English are being forced to ask what it is that makes them who they are. Is there such a thing as an English race? Witty, surprising, affectionate, and incisive, Jeremy Paxman traces the invention of Englishness to its current crisis and concludes that, for all their characteristic gloom about themselves, the English may have developed a form of nationalism for the twenty-first century.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member soliloquies
An amusing look at the upper echelons of the English. It was fairly easy to read, but it did lack a general framework - it was more of a meander through Paxman's mind than a detailed study. There were huge chunks of English society missing, after all the English aren't just upper class public
Show More
school boys. Where were the portraits of the working class? This could have been so much better. Show Less
LibraryThing member liehtzu
A fascinating book for an Irishman to read – it seems there is no such thing as a real Englishman, a country on the cultural crossroads of Europe made dynamic by new blood and reinvigorated periodically by the huddled poor and tired masses long before the USA thought to admit a few white folk to
Show More
its shores. Truly this idea of an homogenised England under one Queen is one of the best fabrications ever to take root. The English aren't bad, like Jessica Rabbit, they were just made that way. Show Less
LibraryThing member jcbrunner
Paxman's portrait of a people fails to include a large bunch of them. In fact, he mainly talks about upper class country squires. His England is the England of Country Life, the England that defeated the Nazis and seeks to preserve the Book of Common Prayer. He fails to mention or discuss that most
Show More
English of Englishness, class. An Englishman has to just open his mouth to be immediately pigeonholed which separates the English from most other nations. He also fails to discuss the regional identities and their relation to England. A comparison to similar cases on the continent (such as Franconia in Bavaria, in turn part of Germany) might have led to insights but would have required research and a broader perspective. Read Kate Fox' Watching the English instead. Show Less
LibraryThing member herschelian
Paxo obviously thinks of himself as English when he is in fact partly Scots, and in this book he tries to pin down the elusive quality that defines the English as a people. Written with all the sardonic wit, breadth of research, and astute perception that one would expect from the Inquisitor
Show More
General of our times. Show Less
LibraryThing member tcarter
I suspect that I will think more of this on a second reading. On first pass it seems a bit of a mish mash with little unifying theme or developed argument. There are some interesting ideas, but it is a strange mix of polemic, bias, commentary and characterture ... a bit like the English I suppose.
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
I had quite forgotten that I had ever read Jeremy Paxman's study of the English people, and was thus pleased when Library Thing magically recommended it to me. As far as I recall, I enjoyed this book, though many of its details and points I can't remember. One thing that stuck in my mind, though,
Show More
is a point familiar to many Brits: the English have something of an identity problem compared to the Welsh and Scottish who help make up Great Britain. And when one talks of Britain and the British, where do the Northern Irish come in? Show Less
LibraryThing member brianclegg
I don't particularly like it, but it's hard to say exactly why.
I suppose part of the problem is that our Jeremy can't help going into sneer mode occasionally (anyone who has seen him on TV knows exactly what such a Jeremy sneer looks like). Take this comment about the English and food: 'For the
The other problem is that on practically every subject, the outcome is neither one thing nor the other. So the English are as they always were, yet they're also quite changed. They are gentle, kind people, who are also aggressive hooligans, and so on. As an analysis, it lacks clear outcomes.
All that said, it's an interesting and entertaining book. What's certainly true is that there is more focus now on being English. Where once the English tended to label themselves British, we are finally coming out as something individual, with a distinct identity. And that isn't a bad thing.
I suppose part of the problem is that our Jeremy can't help going into sneer mode occasionally (anyone who has seen him on TV knows exactly what such a Jeremy sneer looks like). Take this comment about the English and food: 'For the
Show More
majority of people, eating out is to consume fat-filled fast food, and to eat in, to be the victim of something prepackaged in industrial quantities in a factory somewhere.'The other problem is that on practically every subject, the outcome is neither one thing nor the other. So the English are as they always were, yet they're also quite changed. They are gentle, kind people, who are also aggressive hooligans, and so on. As an analysis, it lacks clear outcomes.
All that said, it's an interesting and entertaining book. What's certainly true is that there is more focus now on being English. Where once the English tended to label themselves British, we are finally coming out as something individual, with a distinct identity. And that isn't a bad thing.
Show Less
LibraryThing member riverwillow
Hmmm I've just finished reading this book and as someone who is English I don't really recognise a lot of cultural things Paxman describes and I'm not sure that his England is mine, as an example I live in the suburbs of London and don't know anyone whose home has a name rather than a number.
Show More
Having said that, there are some very familiar things described in the book. But there is, for me, one glaring omission about the inclusiveness of the English culture and how as a nation we have adopted customs and pratices from other cultures such as tea drinking, OK these were cultures we colonised but they have enriched our culture. Show Less
LibraryThing member yukon92
Having read Paxman's book "on Royalty" I was looking forward to this book. However, this book was VERY dry to read and exhausting. If you are looking for a great sleeping pill - try it, it worked every night!
LibraryThing member MiaCulpa
The first time I ever came across Jeremy Paxman was in a Calgary bookshop where I saw "The English" for sale. The front cover promised laughs a plenty so I threw caution to the wind and bought it. I did not laugh once while reading this book; indeed I have trouble remembering if I smiled at all.
Paxman also fails in painting a portrait of the English, using only the broadest of brushstrokes and the most selective of examples. Bill Bryson wrote far better about the English, and he's American.
Show More
Paxman also fails in painting a portrait of the English, using only the broadest of brushstrokes and the most selective of examples. Bill Bryson wrote far better about the English, and he's American.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1998
Physical description
320 p.; 5.08 inches
ISBN
0140267239 / 9780140267235