KATE FOX

Ten years later, they're still talking about the weather! Kate Fox, the social anthropologist who put the quirks and hidden conditions of the English under a microscope, is back with more biting insights about the nature of Englishness. This updated and revised edition of Watching the English--which over the last decade has become the unofficial guidebook to the English national character--features new and fresh insights on the unwritten rules and foibles of "squaddies," bikers, horse-riders, and more. Fox revisits a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. She demystifies the peculiar cultural rules that baffle us: the rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid pantomime rule. Class anxiety tests. The roots of English self-mockery and many more. An international bestseller, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look at the English and their society.

John Barlow, a self-confessed glutton, finds himself in a meat-lover's dream in northern Spain. Galicia, the misty-green north-west corner, reveres and consumes every part of the pig. This starts Barlow thinking about the nature of our relationship with food - what's delicious, what's nasty and what sort of obligation we have to the animals we eat. Over the course of one glorious, bilious year, Barlow tries the patience of his vegetarian wife as he goes the whole hog and vows to eat everything but the squeal, from cocido in a cantina to a chorizo feast at Carnival, from ribs to roast ham, all washed down with local wine - delicious!

In this completely revised and updated edition of international bestseller WATCHING THE ENGLISH, anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. Now with new survey data to add weight to her original fieldwork findings, and more extensive field-research and experiments to back up earlier observations, Kate Fox has deciphered yet more enigmatic behaviour codes, adding new rules, new subcultures, new chapters and over 100 updates. If you're English, this new edition of Kate Fox's acclaimed international bestseller will make you stand back and re-examine everything you take for granted - and if you aren't English you'll finally understand all our peculiar little ways. WATCHING THE ENGLISH has sold more than half a million copies and has been translated into many languages. Not only a worldwide bestseller, but also a set text for university anthropology courses, WATCHING THE ENGLISH has been widely praised as a revealing and entertaining dissection of the English national character.