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A review by andyshute
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox
3.0
I have mixed feelings about this book. For context, I started it back in 2008 just before I left the UK (my country of birth and where I grew up) to move to New Zealand (my new home). Space at a premium back then, it got left behind and it was only last year as the remainder of my possessions finally made the trip overseas that it found itself back on my ‘to be read’ shelves.
If you had to put me on the spot these days I’d classify myself as a ‘Kiwi...who grew up in the UK (that last bit is added on if people question my accent and about half the people I meet these days can’t seem to tell). Has that changed my outlook? Yep. In some ways.
The first few chapters regarding conversation codes are pretty funny and insightful and reminded me a lot of my upbringing. While much of it rung true it highlighted to me how much I’d changed in the last 11 yrs. I could also see an awful lot of my mum’s class insecurities highlighted here as well which I’d never thought too much about.
But. As the book progresses I found myself becoming more agitated and impatient with it. While her style is approachable, it does feel dry at times and there’s an awful lot of repetition, labouring her points again and again. And the more I read, the more I kept asking, ‘where’s the evidence?’.
It felt increasingly generalised with a fairly narrow focus - coming across strongly as a upper middle class, white, south England perspective. I didn’t get much sense of diversity (culturally, ethnically, regionally, sexually) and that’s surely the thing that makes the English so unique compared to many other similar cultures. It’s such a vastly diverse country with such a rich history. It felt like she excluded huge swathes of the population to make the generalisations fit. While I’m sure (and know from experience) that a lot of what she says rings true, it’s not the whole country. England is far more diverse.
And, when it comes to it, she provides very little background, evidence or reference to actually compare any of these traits with other nations (she mainly comments on a few European countries, the colonies, the USA and Japan but ignores pretty much the rest of the world). She just says they’re different. I get it was based on 10 yrs of her own research but 2 of the references she mentions the most are books by Bill Bryson and Jeremy Paxman. This may just be the scientist in me but I like my evidence to be a little more than anecdotal.
Maybe this is all just me being Eeyorish (her reasonably apt term). I do love to moan and over the years I’ve realised this is probably the biggest thing that people from other countries don’t seem to get. They always equate moaning with being unhappy when it’s really not.
Anyway, moaning aside, there is a lot to like, especially in the communication sections and if you are curious as to the meanings behind common social interaction with the English, it’s a reasonable primer. I’m not sure I’d put too much weight on the rest of it though.
If you had to put me on the spot these days I’d classify myself as a ‘Kiwi...who grew up in the UK (that last bit is added on if people question my accent and about half the people I meet these days can’t seem to tell). Has that changed my outlook? Yep. In some ways.
The first few chapters regarding conversation codes are pretty funny and insightful and reminded me a lot of my upbringing. While much of it rung true it highlighted to me how much I’d changed in the last 11 yrs. I could also see an awful lot of my mum’s class insecurities highlighted here as well which I’d never thought too much about.
But. As the book progresses I found myself becoming more agitated and impatient with it. While her style is approachable, it does feel dry at times and there’s an awful lot of repetition, labouring her points again and again. And the more I read, the more I kept asking, ‘where’s the evidence?’.
It felt increasingly generalised with a fairly narrow focus - coming across strongly as a upper middle class, white, south England perspective. I didn’t get much sense of diversity (culturally, ethnically, regionally, sexually) and that’s surely the thing that makes the English so unique compared to many other similar cultures. It’s such a vastly diverse country with such a rich history. It felt like she excluded huge swathes of the population to make the generalisations fit. While I’m sure (and know from experience) that a lot of what she says rings true, it’s not the whole country. England is far more diverse.
And, when it comes to it, she provides very little background, evidence or reference to actually compare any of these traits with other nations (she mainly comments on a few European countries, the colonies, the USA and Japan but ignores pretty much the rest of the world). She just says they’re different. I get it was based on 10 yrs of her own research but 2 of the references she mentions the most are books by Bill Bryson and Jeremy Paxman. This may just be the scientist in me but I like my evidence to be a little more than anecdotal.
Maybe this is all just me being Eeyorish (her reasonably apt term). I do love to moan and over the years I’ve realised this is probably the biggest thing that people from other countries don’t seem to get. They always equate moaning with being unhappy when it’s really not.
Anyway, moaning aside, there is a lot to like, especially in the communication sections and if you are curious as to the meanings behind common social interaction with the English, it’s a reasonable primer. I’m not sure I’d put too much weight on the rest of it though.