THE ANGLO FILES
A Field Guide to the British
By Sarah Lyall
W. W. Norton & Company. US$24.95.

Trans-Atlantic Translations: Explaining England

By James Campbell writing in the New York Times, August 31, 2008

Foreigners are a funny lot. Italians communicate using extravagant gestures, Greeks are untrustworthy, Russians doleful and soulful, the Chinese inscrutable. And as for Englishmen! They are sexually confused, they were “terrorized” by feminism, their dental hygiene is appalling. In England hotels are freezing, judges deliver verdicts wearing “moth-eaten” wigs, journalists are foulmouthed drunken louts, while male members of Parliament are so undone by the existence of women (never mind women M.P.’s) that some “snickered when the issue of cervical cancer came up during a debate on cancer funding.”

It is possible that one or two did, as Sarah Lyall recounts in her book “The Anglo Files” (the anecdote has no source), though it is equally likely that the rest would have disapproved of the puerile antics. Throughout her frequently amusing account of living in England as a reporter for The New York Times, Ms. Lyall takes refuge in roomy generalizations that are hard to refute while at the same time being, at best, half true.
“Is it any wonder,” she asks after a discussion of the abuse suffered by some pupils at elite public (i.e., private) schools, “that Englishmen — particularly British men of a certain class — are so mixed up about sex?” There is a kernel of truth in it somewhere, but first we need to know whom we are talking about.

For the full review go to the NYT online.