Table of Contents

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

Reviews

`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