Introduction: Englishness
1: Energy - Industry - Locomotion - Physicality - Melancholy -
Gravity - Order - Practicality
2: Candour - Plainness - Openness - Separateness - Domesticity -
Honesty - Humbug
3: Decency - Barbarity - Fair Play - Propriety - Modesty
4: Taciturnity - Silence - Conversation - Oratory -
Clubbability
5: Reserve - Xenophobia - Hospitality - Familiarity - Intimacy -
Exclusiveness
6: Eccentricity - Liberty - Informality - Originality - Character -
Eccentrics
Conclusion: Manners and Character
Index
`Review from Hardback edition
In his exhaustively researched, elegantly written and immensely
engaging study, Langford identifies the national characteristics as
energy, candour, decency, taciturnity, reserve and
eccentricity.'
Cultural and Social History
`Langford sets out to prove his case in a robust, no-nonsense,
thoroughly empirical manner.'
David Bell, London Review of Books, 14/12/00.
`Langford has found some real gems in his vast mine of
material.'
David Bell, London Review of Books, 14/12/00.
`Langford himself has a pleasantly dry wit.'
David Bell, London Review of Books, 14/12/00.
`This wonderful book brings such detail and generalisation together
by being organised not chronologivally but by 'six major supposed
traits of Englishness': Energy, Candour, Decency, Taciturnity,
Reserve, Eccentricity. Langford has read widely and unpredictably,
especially in accounts that have never been translated into
English. This has allowed him to produce a book that is, in one
respect, brilliantly un-English: it is fascinated by what
foreigners have
thought.'
The Guardian
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