The English

Do you…
•like drinking until your bladder explodes?
•envy your neighbour’s kitchen worktop?
•force-feed your children burgers through school railings?
•appreciate an award-winning toilet?
•consider Newport Pagnell services a romantic destination?
•use laser technology to mow perfect lawn-stripes ?
•enjoy a good, organised queuing system?

Congratulations – you’re English!*

Thanks to television documentaries by Bruce Parry and David Attenborough, we are better acquainted with the hunting rituals of the San bushmen and the mating habits of Papua New Guinean tribes than we are with the everyday lives of that most peculiar of species – the English.

Matt Rudd has been getting to know this curious breed, and now you’ll be able to spot the English in any number of their natural habitats – reclining on their living room sofas; getting drizzled on as they wait for the 05.37 from Sevenoaks; eating pakoras at the Birmingham Lahore Village Balti House; and dogging around Thetford Forest.

In ‘The English: A Field Guide’, Sunday Times journalist Matt Rudd sets off on a journey to uncover what makes us, the English, tick. Hilarious, warm-hearted and surprisingly enlightening, ‘The English’ shines a strong searchlight on us all.

*If you’re not English, but still fit this description, you are probably Scottish or Welsh, and have a lot more in common with the English than you would like to admit.