Watching the English: The International Bestseller Revised and Updated - Kate Fox - 9781444785203

In this completely revised and updated edition of international bestseller WATCHING THE ENGLISH, anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people.

Now with new survey data to add weight to her original fieldwork findings, and more extensive field-research and experiments to back up earlier observations, Kate Fox has deciphered yet more enigmatic behaviour codes, adding new rules, new subcultures, new chapters and over 100 updates. If you’re English, this new edition of Kate Fox’s acclaimed international bestseller will make you stand back and re-examine everything you take for granted – and if you aren’t English you’ll finally understand all our peculiar little ways.

WATCHING THE ENGLISH has sold more than half a million copies and has been translated into many languages. Not only a worldwide bestseller, but also a set text for university anthropology courses, WATCHING THE ENGLISH has been widely praised as a revealing and entertaining dissection of the English national character.

Reviews:

"It is consistently the most popular text I teach, not only because it's a hilarious page-turner but also because Fox offers truly insightful glimpses into what a sophisticated anthropological mindset can reveal about human cultural life . . . Watching the English embodies the anthropological credo of making the strange familiar and the familiar strange." - Bianca Dahl, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto

"Kate Fox's brilliant idea is to treat the British as another tribe...where she's particularly astute is in examining the exact pattern of clichés. Any study of the English must cover our class obsession, and Fox deals with the subject thoroughly." - Harry Mount, author of How England Made the English

"If you like this kind of anthropology (and I do) there is a wealth of it to enjoy in this book. Her observations are acute... fortunately she doesn't write like an anthropologist but like an English woman - with amusement, not solemnity, able to laugh at herself as well as us." - Daily Mail

"I loved the section on mobile-phone etiquette. Shrewd...I liked the chapter on English humour. This is an entertaining, clever book. Do read it and then pass it on." - Telegraph

"She has not only compiled a comprehensive list of English qualities, she has examined them in depth and wondered how we came to acquire them. Her book is a delightful read." - Sunday Times

"An absolutely brilliant examination of English culture and how foreigners take as complete mystery the things we take for granted." - Jennifer Saunders, The Times

"Brilliant and hilarious" - Grayson Perry

"I read it cover to cover in a few days . . . very sharp and witty prose. It really is funny - the sort of humour that makes you laugh out loud on your own!" - Martin Parr, Vice

"She is the only popular UK anthropologist of substance since the 1970s." - Jeremy MacClancy, Professor of Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University

"She's a witty and eloquent writer whose accessible book reads as a scholarly classification of our shared codes of behaviour and an affectionate homage to our foibles." - Metro