Jeremy Paxman: The English: Portrait of a people
Fun book – really a collection of essays – on the English (not to be confused with Britain…..). A good companion to Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island, which Paxman pans a number of times with the huffiness of an academically oriented journalist beaten to the punch by an American with better jokes and fewer footnotes.
Paxman sees the English myth – of “mustn’t grumble”, uneducated elite and imperial post-partum depressions – as a big lie. Hooliganism, modernism and individuality are not aberrations, but the true English character, and have always been. Interesting chapter on the strict hierarchical relationship between the sexes, as well as the consequences of generations trained never to display emotion.
Recommended.