Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #279894 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 286 pages

Synopsis
In this witty and stylish companion to Englishness Sunday Times columnist Godfrey Smith takes us on a leisurely but perceptive tour of all that he holds dear in England and the English. It is very much an informal ramble, as if in the company of an old friend. He treats us to a display of sparkling and knowledgeable comments on our national life from Churchill to pubs, Elgar to Rugby, Bertie Wooster to George Orwell, British beef to the National Lottery and from fish and chips to Evelyn Waugh.

Customer Reviews

An absolute gem of a book
What an impossible subject to capture but be has done so and done it brilliantly. Godfrey Smith, a master craftsman with the language, has used his immense experience of being an Englishman to gather together scores of facets of our character and, even though we Englishmen should be aware of them all, what a pleasure it is to ramble through them particularly in these days of Europe, devolution and the dreaded political correctness. The perfect antidote to Brussels and the 'new' world in which we seem to dwell.

Poignant...
A charming and entertaining book that is, though, swiftly heading towards obsolescence as the English people featured in here find themselves gradually replaced by a new form of 'English' people from all corners of the globe who, sadly, share few of the characteristics featured in this book. Buy this and enjoy it as a piece of nostalgia.

A marvellous read for all Anglophiles
Vivid, alert, affectionate and cogent - a most entertaining book - KINGLEY AMIS The Mail on Sunday Godfrey Smith writes beautiful, pithy English.. venerates the beauties of English towns and countryside, luxuriates in English Freedoms, cherishes the riches of English civilisation, loves his country. JOHN KEEGAN The Sunday Times A mixture of eccentricity and scholoarship, highly entertaining. A J P TAYLOR