The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the English

In 1995 Sarah Lyall, a New York Times reporter, left behind her American roots and moved to London for love. As that newspaper's correspondent in London, she has become well known for her witty and incisive dispatches from her adoptive country. Arriving on these shores as Blair's New Labour swept into power, she has witnessed a roller-coaster decade in the life of modern Britain: a frenetic and materialistic time during which the traditional British values of reserve, deference and the stiff upper lip have done battle with the forces of rampant consumerism, overwrought emotion and an invading army of Polish plumbers.In "A Field Guide to the British" Sarah Lyall writes with acute insight and razor-sharp humour on the manners and mores, foibles and frailties of the denizens of the small island she now calls home. Rich in memorable anecdote, it explores Anglo-Saxon attitudes to class, sex, alcohol, animals and the weather; offers some choice examples of the classic British characteristics of self-deprecation, understatement and eccentricity; and examines the many quirks and curiosities of life in contemporary Britain, from salad cream to binge drinking, from questionable personal hygiene to Cornish pasties, and from members of parliament who behave like naughty prep school boys to drinking outside pubs in the rain.