Books
Anthropologist, study thyself. So the English are eccentric, self-deprecating and good at queueing - what's new? Forget such observations. That an Oxford social scientist can get away with producing witless, patronising pap tells us much more about contemporary England
Published 10 May 2004
Watching the English: the hidden rules of English behaviour
Kate Fox Hodder & Stoughton, 424pp, £20
ISBN 0340818859
Doubting that they would match up to Luigi Barzini on the Italians or Daniel Boorstin on the Americans - Orwell excepted - I have never felt drawn to books about England and the English. To an impure member of the race (more Scottish/Irish in my case), the genre is not enticing. Autoerotic maunderings about national identity are an English vice, and it is unseemly to intrude on other people's self-pleasuring. My suspicion that such works are frequently a form of narcissism parading as wry self-deprecation has been confirmed by this insufferably wry book.
Wry, I have discovered, is related to Middle English "writhe", and Kate Fox certainly has that effect on you. English eccentricity, English pub talk, English humour, English queuing and English irony are discussed without a spark of illumination, though in a largely affectionate way, which goes with wry. At times, reader and author writhe together, for different reasons. When driven to admit that English politeness is not invariably about consideration for others, that doing yourself down is a not-too-clever form of self-assertion, or that the humour can be unfunny, Fox slips swiftly into wondrous contortions to soothe any offence; populist anthropologists, like politicians, must never be too rude about the public. Beneath a welter of commonplaces, she even manages to obscure the roots of English genius, most visible in government, science or literature.
Honest analysts of Englishness do not aim to make their subjects feel good about their quirky, indecipherable selves. William Hazlitt got English tolerance right when he suggested that it was little more than "indolence of disposition". "Blast English humour", Wyndham Lewis exploded, "conventionalising like gunshot", while Cyril Connolly despaired of England's "self-sealing tanks of complacency". This imperviousness, while appearing infinitely porous to reproach, is part of the English game. It leaves no hold for criticism, their own or anyone else's. It is not so much that you prick the English and they don't bleed; you haven't the heart to prick someone already dripping with self-inflicted wounds. It is stage blood, however, and not even their most masochistic darts of satire can perforate the pachyderm beneath. Probe too seriously into that and they get you for earnestness, or put you down with their toleration.
Back, reluctantly, to Fox's book. You glance at the title, open it, note the demotic locutions ("I'll wimp out of that debate") and assume she's a hack. Gotcha! She is co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre at Oxford and fellow of the Institute for Cultural Research. The daughter of an eminent anthropologist, with a sister who is also a social scientist and a fiance, Henry, who is a brain surgeon who got a First, she once owned an Arab stallion, though at university she joined "umpteen" left-wing political groups. We know all this because she tells us. Thought that Oxford anthropologists couldn't write in a confessional, weekend magazine way? Gotcha again. Ah, the endless originality of the English and their gift for astonishing the impressionable.
Our author does not wear her accessibility lightly. Citing one of her works, she assures us that "it's a lot less pompous than the title makes it sound". She's matey with the populace, our Kate. The reason her thoughts are accessible is that they are couched in a girlie style and are banal to the bone. "Hapless" and "long- suffering" feature frequently, along with lots and lots about little me ("I really, really do not want to do this"). Of a research expedition to English gardens, she writes larkily: "Now you know: that person you thought was a burglar or a peeping Tom was me." This from an analyst of English humour.
Why come down heavily on a bantamweight book? Because a work of intellectual nullity oozing populist ingratiation written by a woman of Fox's background and status tells you more about contemporary England than do any of her observations. "A fairly typical Guardian-reading, left-liberal product of the anti-Thatcher generation" is how she characterises herself - tone-deaf, it appears, to the neo-patrician smugness of boasts about being in there with the herd. "Smoothness, glibness and confidence," she remarks, "are un-English." Anthropologist, study thyself. It takes a great deal of glib self-confidence for an Oxford academic to write this book.
Too harsh? Not if you have to read it. "Apres sex, if we have fallen asleep, the next morning we revert to the usual state of awkward Englishness. We say: I'm terribly sorry, but I didn't quite catch your name . . . ?" This is saucy little me. "It's my book, so I can do what I like." This is zany little me. "My irreverence bordered on heresy" is subversive little me. "Really useful information, Kate," she writes ironically in her epilogue. "You've cracked the code. Now leave it alone . . . Get a life. Yes. Right. Absolutely. Enough is enough. Ooh but hang on a sec."
No Oxbridge social scientist could have published such stuff in previous generations, which is Fox's pitch for originality, and the result is anthropologically revealing: of a very English type of educated obtuseness, of the permeation of academia by journalistic vulgarity and, above all, of a heartfelt condescension, a national speciality that Fox finds curiously little space to discuss. Has she ever pondered de Tocqueville's remark, highly apposite here, that the French look up in anxiety while the English look down in satisfaction? You can sense her wriggling with joy at the ellipses, ruderies and roguishness of popular parlance unearthed in her pub research ("someone had to do it"). "And one for yourself?" affords her especial pleasure. It is not customary in English pubs, she informs us, to tip the publican or bar staff who serve you - a worthwhile tip in itself. "The usual practice is, instead, to buy them a drink."
There is a touching innocence here, except that she is so obviously on to a good thing. If Susan Greenfield can publicise brain science by talking about her bottom, anything is possible - providing you ignore the damage to women's status. When the very tailors become sans-culottes, Thomas Carlyle fumed, then we are sunk - as we are when anthropologists affect a Jilly Cooper/Bridget Jones manner. And it will work. It is perfect newspaper serialisation stuff. Pages of ready-made nudging chat about tiresomely familiar aspects of Englishness - the quaintnesses and quirkinesses, the lavatories and the loos, the "sex talk rules", the office parties, the suburban gardens and the grinning bloody gnomes - guarantee satisfaction. Readers who only want to be told what they know already will sink comfortably into Fox's world of deja su.
And what is wrong with that? Is not one smile of self-recognition worth a hundred anxious frowns? The self-celebratory undertone of the book is also very much of its time. Fox became frustrated with social science for concentrating on behaviour we wish to prevent, such as crime, rather than on what should be applauded and encouraged, such as DIY (". . . dealing with burning social issues such as how many cups of tea does it take the average Englishman to put up a shelf").
Most depressing is her head-girl jollity. "Gosh, what a dull lot," she exclaims over reports that young people are rather conservative. "Oh for heaven's sake, lighten up! Live a little! Rebel a bit!" Though not to the point, one imagines, of asking troubling questions, such as what it is about the English that makes it possible for social scientists in prestigious positions to write witless, patronising pap like this and be commended for it? To reach a wider public? That is easily enough done: all it needs is for educated folk to piss on them from an ever-greater height and in an ever-widening gyre. If you end up with a piss-sodden, cow-eyed public, one incidental result will be that they will be all the less qualified to compete with you for a place at your seat of higher learning. A culture of condescension is a great way to keep people in their place. Could that be a hidden rule of Englishness, too?
George Walden is the author of The New Elites (Penguin)
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