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This book can be found in:
History > Regional & national history > Britain & Ireland
Politics, Society & Education > Society & culture > Cultural studies
How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don't Talk to Our Neighbours (Paperback)
  • How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don't Talk to Our Neighbours (Paperback)
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How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don't Talk to Our Neighbours (Paperback)

(author)
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£9.99
Paperback 368 Pages / Published: 04/04/2013
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Synopsis
Harry Mount's How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don't Talk to Our Neighbours is packed with astonishing facts and wonderful stories. Q. Why are English train seats so narrow? A. It's all the Romans' fault. The first Victorian trains were built to the same width as horse-drawn wagons; and they were designed to fit the ruts left in the roads by Roman chariots. For readers of Paxman's The English, Bryson's Notes on a Small Island and Fox's Watching the English, this intriguing and witty book explains how our national characteristics - our sense of humour, our hobbies, our favourite foods and our behaviour with the opposite sex - are all defined by our nation's extraordinary geography, geology, climate and weather. You will learn how we would be as freezing cold as Siberia without the Gulf Stream; why we drive on the left-hand side of the road; why the Midlands became the home of the British curry. It identifies the materials that make England, too: the faint pink Aberdeen granite of kerbstones; that precise English mix of air temperature, smell and light that hits you the moment you touch down at Heathrow. Praise for Harry Mount: 'Highly readable, encyclopeadic, marvellous, illuminating. Mount portrays England via dextrous excavations of its geography, geology, history and weather' Independent 'Fascinating. Mount's an intelligent, funny and always interesting companion' Daily Mail 'Charming and nerdily fact-stuffed' Guardian Harry Mount is the author of Amo, Amas, Amat and All That, his best-selling book on Latin, and A Lust for Window Sills - A Guide to British Buildings. A journalist for many newspapers and magazines, he has been a New York correspondent and a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. He studied classics and history at Oxford, and architectural history at the Courtauld Institute. He lives in north London

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780670919147
Number of pages: 368
Weight: 316 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 23 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS
A lovely book, very engaging and easy to read. There are chapters on weather and soil and stone, on the history of hedges or the making of suburbia, all of them infectious did-you-knows. Mount is a natural and enthusiastic sharer of knowledge * Evening Standard *
Charming and nerdily fact-stuffed * Guardian *
Lively, a delight. Mount's paragraphs explode with information . . . I love all this, want more, and am given it. The sort of book, in its temperament and in its detail, that has helped to make England English * Spectator *
Mount is as perceptive as he is obsessive, and time and again he skewers with unfailing accuracy some aspect of our national character * Mail on Sunday *
'Fascinating. Mount's an intelligent, funny and always interesting companion * Daily Mail *

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Reviews

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“Packed full of interesting facts and observations”

In this book, Harry Mount explains how England and the English people have evolved over time in to what we know today. It is packed full of interesting facts and observations however some things in the book are... More

Paperback edition
27th August 2014
Helpful? Upvote 38

“An Interesting read”

The English landscape is unlike any other country around the world, from the patchwork fields, to the geology beneath our feet. We have an amazing diversity, from salt marches to soaring cliffs, sandy beaches to the... More

Paperback edition
15th November 2013
Helpful? Upvote 29

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