The English; A Field Guide, Matt Rudd

"A hilarious field guide to the world’s most remarkable and unusual creatures: the English.

Who are the English? What is this puzzling species? Where does it live? What are its habits? What does it eat? Why does it eat that? And why has it developed such unexotic mating rituals?

Join us on a journey deep into the natural habitat of the English, a journey to rival anything David Attenborough did with gorillas, a journey that begins on a sofa (and continues, unflinchingly, into the kitchen, out into the garden, off to work, down to the pub and then on to the beach… and the bedroom).

Matt Rudd’s fearless anthropological approach leaves no cliché unturned in his attempt to portray the real English. Are we really a nation of binge-drinking, horse-meat-eating, grumbling, tailgating slobs or is there something altogether more beautiful to be found lurking behind the cypress leylandii?

This unprecedented adventure will take you to a DFS store, to Blackpool’s third best B&B, to the coffee kiosk on platform one at 5.35 in the morning. You will step into a ready-meal curry factory, a naturist’s back garden and an office of the future where they do somersaults into beanbags. You will endure a night out in Wakefield, a night out in a queue and a night in Thetford Forest trying, unsuccessfully, to prove that dogging is an urban myth. You will watch Reading play football.

And all from the comfort of your own sofa. How English."

Matt Rudd's The English: A Field Guide is that rare thing that is worse than a Jeremy Clarkson recommendation would suggest, a book that is utterly, shockingly, unfailingly without merit. Presumably some very nice trees were harvested so that this self-indulgent paeon to middle England could be printed, which is a shame because that tree probably provided more insight, wit and value than this book. Matt Rudd is seemingly a journalist. Presumably print media's long anticipated death will be suicide. Sinking any lower is impossible.

From front cover to last page, this is a savage indictment of modern England (and this is, of course, written to show nothing other than England, an England unmoored from Wales, Scotland or Ireland, ignorant of any land outside itself and unwilling to drag itself into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st.

To read the back of the book you would think this were the first book to tackle the pop-anthropology of the English mind, but it isn't. This isn't even a Buzzfeed-esque '30 great things about England' experience. It's the utterly depressing middle-aged masturbation fodder of a man who has escaped from The Times style-guide and decided he's witty enough to carry a whole book. He isn't, and he isn't even glib. He's just a dick on a keyboard.

If 'You Are Shit But I like You' was tedious and repetitive it at least found a natural niche in providing information about the unlovely and hideous. This doesn't have even that, instead trying to masquerade its own importence as a sort of jolly 1950s slide-show of travels around England, with 90% less Punch and Judy shows and children throwing up from consuming an ice cream for the first time, and 100% more shit patriotism.

Hilarious like a door and half as readable. Don't read this, just move on.

Also Try:
Kate Fox, Watching The English
Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island
Jeremy Paxman, The English

literally anything else ever written