Product Description

Not so long ago, writes Jeremy Paxman, the English were "polite, unexcitable, reserved, and had hot-water bottles instead of a sex-life". Today the end of empire has killed off the Bulldog Breed - "fearless and philistine, safe in taxis and invaluable in shipwrecks" - and transformed the great public schools. Princess Diana was mourned with the effusive emotionalism of an Italian saint. Leader-writers in "The Times" even praise the sexual skills of English lovers ...So what are the defining features of "Englishness"? How can a country of football hooligans have such an astonishingly low murder rate? Does the nation's sense of itself extend to millions of black, Asian and other immigrant Britons? Is it grounded in arrogant, nostalgic fantasy or can it form the basis for building a realistic future within Europe? To answer these crucial questions, Paxman looks for clues in the English language, literature, luke-warm religion and "curiously passionless devotion" to cricket. He explores attitudes to Catholics, the countryside, intellectuals, food and the French. And he brings together insights from novelists, sociologists and gentleman farmers; the editor of "This England" magazine (launched in 1967 with the slogan "as refreshing as a cup of tea"); a banker enthusiastic about the "English vice" of flagellation; and a team at the OED looking for the first occurrence of phrases like "bad hair day" and "the dog's bollocks".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34679 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
What is it about the English? Not the British overall, not the Scots, not the Irish or Welsh, but the English. Why do they seem so unsure of who they are? As Jeremy Paxman remarks in his preface to The English, being English "used to be so easy". Now, with the Empire gone, with Wales and Scotland moving into more independent postures, with the troubling spectre of a united Europe(and despite the raucous hype of "Cool Britannia"), the English seem to have entered a collective crisis of national identity.

Jeremy Paxman has set himself the task of finding just what exactly is going on. Why, he wonders, "do the English seem to enjoy feeling so persecuted? What is behind the English obsession with games? How did they acquire their odd attitudes to sex and food? Where did they get their extraordinary capacity for hypocrisy?" He ranges widely in pursuit of answers, sifting through literature, cinema and history. It is an intriguing investigation, encompassing many aspects of national life and character (such as it is), including the obligatory visit to that baffling phenomenon, the funeral of Princess Diana. Yet Paxman finds something fresh and interesting to say about even that now rather threadbare topic. In the end, he seems to find further questions to ask instead of answers. But why not? To him it is a sign that the English are acquiring a new sense of self. And some indication of this might lie in the obvious response to his remark that the English, being top of the British Imperial tree, had nicknames for the fellow nationalities--Jock, Taffy, Paddy and Mick--but there was no corresponding name for an Englishman. Of course, there is now, and it comes from one of the bits of empire to which so many undesirables were exported: Whinging Pom. --Robin Davidson

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Book
About two years ago, a Romanian friend of mine asked me for some help on a dissertation she was preparing called 'The National Identity of the English'. This, to her was a completely natural request for help: she could have easily answered, as could any half-intelligent Romanian, the reverse question on Romanian national identity, even in these troubled times. However, to me, this 'simple' question posed enormous problems. I could not find one book to help me. Scotland... yes, Wales... yes and even Britain but not England.

Eventually, after weeks of fruitless search, the best I could come up with was a book on the 'Empire English'. However, even here, it was a story of the British national identity which bears little resemblance to the England of today with a 'crisis' of devolution of Britain and prospects of further 'encroachment' on our England from Europe.

So, her question had raised many questions in my head about the new nature of England: questions of what the English identity really is. Paxman, in this book, answers many of these questions whilst raising many more.

This book takes us on a journey through time. The move from the typically British identity to a new English one of today. Paxman's sharp, if journalistically cynical, observation and writings lead us towards the recognition of a new English nationalism and the picture of one that will emerge after Britain has finally separated. It could be recommended to any Englishman or women who want to express their idea of England and to any foreigner who wants to know who we are.

In the future on being asked the question 'Explain the National Identity of the English' I will have no hesitation in giving this book as the best answer available today.

VERY well researched, but a little rambling
Paxman leaves the reader with the firm impression that they are simply not well enough read to be thumbing the pages of The English. It is a very densely written book, packed full of annecdotes and asides, and I enjoyed reading it. But it is more of a water-colour than a sketch - the author applies layer upon layer upn layer of detail, and the reader is given the feeling that neither he, nor Paxman, knows exactly what the English are really about. This may be Paxman's point - nationhood is too dense a subject to be delineated in simple terms. Maybe...

I enjoyed the book, but it is not an intuitive read. Dense, witty, but generally a little confused - Paxman's sharp wit, of the genre displayed on Newsnight, was sadly lacking as a punctuation to a rather rambling tome.

Those happy few walking backwards into the future
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" - Henry V, according to Shakespeare, on the eve of Agincourt

"... the English have found themselves walking backwards into the future, their eyes fixed on a point some time at the turn of the twentieth century." - Jeremy Paxman

THE ENGLISH by Jeremy Paxman is an erudite, thoughtful, and thought-provoking essay on what it means to be "English". Jeremy addresses eleven general topics in the same number of chapters. The post-WWII loss of identity concurrent with the divestment of Empire. The English attitude towards foreigners. The submergence of English identity in Empire. The nebulosity of the attribute "true-born Englishmen". The English affection for being beleaguered against overwhelming odds (as at Agincourt, Khartoum, Rorke's Drift, Mafeking, Dunkirk, and during The Blitz). The Church of England. The English as misanthropes. The enduring fantasy of rural England. The "ideal Englishman", anti-intellectual and with stiff upper lip. Sex, and the status of women in society. And, lastly, dragging England out of its glorious past into an uncertain future.

Paxman volunteers insights that I, a visitor to England (and Wales and Scotland) multiple, but all too infrequent, times, would never have thought of:

"The picture of (arcadian) England that the English carry in their collective mind is so astonishingly powerful because it is a sort of haven ... a refuge conjured up in the longing for home of a chap stuck deep in the bush, serving his queen ..."

Or, this:

"The English fixation with weather is nothing to do with histrionics ... The interest is less in the phenomena themselves, but in uncertainty. ... It is the consequence of genuine, small-scale anxiety. ... life at the edge of an ocean and the edge of a continent means you can never be entirely sure what you're going to get."

Paxman's narrative is always interesting, and occasionally witty in a dry, English sort of way. Whether his conclusions are correct or not is best left to the judgment of the reader. (Indeed, anthropologist Kate Fox, in the first chapter of her book, WATCHING THE ENGLISH, maintains that Paxman missed the point with his weather observation.) For the most part, however, they seem eminently reasonable to me, although I might have encompassed one or two peculiarities that have become apparent during my lifetime love affair with the country, e.g., that the English seem to lavish more affection on their pets than their children.

Finally, I applaud the author's attempt to tease apart national characteristics of the English from the "British" overlay. Mind you, "English", "Welsh" and "Scottish", are all lumped under the political construct "British", which is oft wrongly equated with "English" by both ignoramuses and those that should know better. After my many visits to the island, what I remember most vividly (and superficially) are: "Mind the gap!", Cadbury dispensers on railway platforms, Marks & Spencer, the smell of coal smoke on a rainy day, the fluttering and cooing of doves in abbey ruins, roundabouts, kippers for breakfast, Indian take-away, the cold mustiness of the cavernous cathedrals, Scotch eggs, London Tube maps, the low-ceilinged (ouch!) gun deck of HMS Victory, time-warped floor boards in ancient wooden inns, gravestones in isolated cemeteries, and the pre-dawn departure of fishing boats from Portree on the Isle of Skye - only a few of which are unique to an English experience, but all are British.