Product Description

The English Year is a lavishly illustrated month-by-month, day-by-day guide to all the customs and festivals of England, from the national celebrations to herald the new year down to small local traditions such as the Minehead Hobby Horse or Duck Racing in Oxfordshire. If you want to know where you can get free bread and beer on any day of the year; if you want to know where Mayday comes from or why you sould protect yourself on Mischief Night; or why the English go in for all kinds of arcane celebrations but can't be bothered with St George's Day - the is the book for you.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63623 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

THE TIMES -- REQUIRED READING
'A delight -- a fascinating, readable fund of information, written
with scholarship and wit and beautifully designed.

About the Author
Steve Roud has been researching British folklore for over thirty years. He is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore and the author of The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, winner of the 2004 Katharine Briggs Folklore. He lives in Sussex.

Customer Reviews

Thoroughly fascinating
Nowadays the English are starting to wonder about their own culture and roots and Roud's useful and interesting compendium is a good place to start. Not only does it include customs still practised today like Hallaton's Hare Pie and Bottle-Kicking, but also historical events that are often mentioned in song or legend, such as Bartholomew's Fair. It's well written, beautifully illustrated and equally good for dipping into or looking something up. It serves to prove that the English are deep down not the boring, staid, polite folk the world thinks they are.

authoritative and readable
I bought this book for a friend, but kept it myself after being impressed by its dip-into-ability, its authority, readability and the fact that it is clearly the product of considerable research. The author has drawn widely in his search for the origins of English customs and is not afraid to dispense with a few myths along the way: if there is no evidence that a custom 'has its origins in the Middle Ages' he'll say so. An impressive piece of work.

see also
Those who enjoyed this will probably also Enjoy Richard Lewis' The Magic Spring: My Year Learning to be English