Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

A runaway bestseller in the UK, Watching the English is now available in the U.S. for the first time! Witty and wise, Kate Fox reveals the quirks, habits, and foibles of the English in her book Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Putting the national character under her microscope, Fox explores this strange and fascinating culture, governed by a complex set of unspoken rules and a bizarre code of conduct. Through anthropological analysis and a series of unorthodox experiments (often using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Fox discovers what these unwritten codes tell us about Englishness: the rules of weather-speak, the ironic-gnome rule, the reflex apology rule, the paranoid-pantomime rule, class anxiety tests, and the money-talk taboo, among others. Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful, and often hilarious look at English society.

Kate Fox, a social anthropologist, is Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford and a Fellow od the Institute for Cultural Research. The author or co-author of four previous books, Fox's work centers on intriguing aspects of human behaviour including pub culture, gossip, flirting, horseracing, mobile phones, email, stress, drugs, crime, violence and social taboos. She lives in London.