| Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Fox
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £1.97
You Save: £7.02 (78%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 944
Media: Paperback
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0340818867
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780340818862
ASIN: 0340818867
Publication Date: April 11, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Watching the English March 11, 2007
9 out of 21 found this review helpful
That's an interesting book although I'm not sure that some attitudes mentioned as typically English are not to be found in other societies.
However there is something which, as a Frenchman, I find very English, is the interest the English(British?) find in writing about themselves. I tried to find one single book written about the French by a French writer and I couldn't find any. So there's a missing chapter in Ms kate Fox's book which is about the self-centered interest the English have in self-analysis.
 utter drivel March 5, 2007
9 out of 33 found this review helpful
As inane and cliched as a book gets. She confuses 1950s England with the 21st centruy. she makes stuff up to suit her hypotheses and she seems to have trouble distinguishing upper class people from just plain rich people. just don't don't don't read it.
Great Book if you can forgive Kate... March 5, 2007
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
Generally I think this is an excellent book and if you want to know more about the English and English social norms it's certainly not a bad idea to read it.
In fact, I should have given it 5 stars, but for three reasons. One of these reasons might have been the fact that much of this is particularly applicable to London, and the English through the eyes of the chattering classes...but I shouldn't like to appear to pedantic.
So the three reasons:
1. The author Kate Fox somewhat inappropriately and unsublty uses every available opportunity to try and score class points for herself (I'm particularly talking about the shameless story of the drink mat present and the window frames - and the labrador party dogs here). Presumably via her own diagnosis the class insecurities displayed by desperately trying to indicate her own status demote her to middle-middle at best? From time to time I think the author is guilty of confusing 'London pretentiousness' with class.
2. The author is seemingly trying to cosy up to the media at every available opportunity. I couldn't help feeling Kate was being a touch disingenious here - presumably because she relies on media based clients for a living - not to mention reviews!
3. While Kate's observations are truly first class (in my opinion) - and the writing style is excellent - entertaining and substantial - I couldn't help feeling the final analysis doesn't quite live up to initial observation. But this is a minor point because the information is good enough, which allows you to make your own mind up independently - and Kate's opinions are interesting at any rate.
So, all in all - it's informative, educational and entertaining! It is a reader friendly book, but hasn't been dummed down - and is certainly of a highly competent academic standard.
 english or british!? March 1, 2007
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
i thoroughly enjoyed the book and 'learned' lots of things. so many things made sense and i found the stuff about privacy very interesting and dis-ease and the confused work ethic.
whilst living in germany i had also remarked that we brits are very inept at hello and goodbye. when to shake the hand, when not to etc and the long drawn out goodbye ritual.
the only reason that i gave it four stars and not 5 is because after about fifty pages of reading the word 'english' over and over again it started to really grate with me. kate fox gave an explanation of why she used the word 'english' and not 'british' but after a while that explanation ran out of steam for me. does she presume that these behaviours and attitudes stop just after carlisle, shrewsbury or even carrickfergus? if she does she is so sadly mistaken.
i have spent years as a teacher of english to foreigners and spent an awful lot of time abroad and can categorically say that bagpipes and kilts aside, the only difference in day to day behaviour and attitudes in scotland is that the scots don't support the england football team/ the same goes for other parts of the uk too.
she also referred to 'english' tv. now to me that means 'english language tv'. tv is not english - the BBC is not the English Broadcasting Corporation but the British one. Is she suggesting that people in Wales have a different view of Big Brother than the English? Or that Eastenders and Coronation Street touch the people of Scotland on a different emotional level?
I have spent years trying to convince foreigners and English people that the words British and English are not interchangeable and that Scotland does not belong to England but is a partner as are Wales and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.
incidentally many of the so-called english characteristics could also have been written about the germans. does she not know that the germans are obsessed with their gardens and their priavcy too??
 The dangers of stereotypes March 1, 2007
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
What a shame! Kate Fox clearly has a superb subject here, and directly taps into the English propensity to naval gaze and criticise social convention. Yet what has been outturned is a simple sequence of English stereotypes, as retailed in the red top news media. The potted characterisations are broadly amusing, but there is a total frustration with all of this - mainly, why and how "Englishness" has evolved, which is never really considered.
I picked this one up as a "light-bite" whilst on holiday expecting to be informed and possibly entertained, being a non-expert in this area. I consequently spent a week of total frustration with the thing - society is a nuanced and subtle mixture of characteristics, not the stark divisions of class and social background that this book seems to delight in. Much of it may have been relevent in 1950s England, but now it just reads like the worst stuff to be found in the Daily Mail. Anybody with a deeper interest in sociology as an academic discipline may wish to give this an extremely wide berth.
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