"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.

It's a kind of enigma really. Paxman writes a book about a people who, in his own words, don't really have any distinguishing features. Quite an accomplishment. That Paxman does it in an interesting and often witty way is something too.

But the language is often obscure. It's as if Paxman writes in order to demonstrate some new nugget of language he has found in the Oxford English Dictionary. I've been teaching English for 10 years and I'd never heard of some of the words he was using.

I've a feeling that this book will appeal little to people from the US in either style and content. If you are looking for a book that will introduce the English to you in a personable way you can relate to, get a copy of Bill Bryson's Notes from Small Island which will do it in a much nicer and far more approachable style.

If however, you are English yourself, you will find this book worth the read although if, like me, you find your national identity difficult to define, don't expect help here. In much the same way as Koreans describe themselves as "NOT Japanese" and the Japanese describe themselves as "NOT anyone else", Paxman tiptoes around the English to tell us how their neighbours are and how we aren't.

The result is a wonderfully ironic description very English in its understatement.

Well, the style is very good indeed. It is quite evident that he comes from what he calls "The breed", but the insular character of "The English" gives a very unbiased view of what an English is. I could write another version of it, I think he was not successful in taking distance from the subject and in some cases not only minimises some facts about ordinary English life, in other cases he has not got a wider view from other cultures on how The English is seen from abroad.
I would suggest Mr. Paxman to travel a bit more accross Europe at least...

I'd never read anything by Paxman before, so like other reviewers, I wondered how academic this might be. In fact, contrary to the reviews on the flyleaf, I didn't find it as funny as they suggested it might be.
But I was not disappointed but delighted. I didn't want some flippant lightweight humourous prose, but I got a very well researched book with some funny bits.
I've recommended it to Americans who don't understand the English psyche.

As a US ex-pat who has lived in Britain for 11 years, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Yes, it is a highly personal and opinionated book, but who wants to read a list of statistics? Besides, it's what Mr Paxman does best. It shows another endearing characteristic of the English - the tendency to declaim on anything without worrying about whether they actually know much about it and often being very entertaining while doing it.

The book is chiding without being churlish, funny without being farcical, and at times downright affectionate. It does get slightly repetitive and rambling, but I highly recommend it. It is a great conversation starter and at times made me laugh out loud.

Oh - and also - the "curiously English geek quiz show, University Challenge" actually started in the US as College Bowl before coming to the UK. But it is indeed far more popular here than it was there. Does this say something else about the English perhaps?