Stuff Brits Like - A Guide to What's Great About Great Britain

Zusatztext “A thoroughly wonderful ride through Britishness…One couldn’t put it down.”—@Queen_UK! author of Gin O’Clock and Still Reigning Informationen zum Autor Fraser McAlpine is the lead writer for Anglophenia, BBC America’s blog for American Anglophiles, and consequently spends a good deal of his working life arguing about the finer points of Doctor Who , Sherlock , Downton Abbey and anything with Tom Hiddleston in it. He lives in Cornwall, which is the Florida of the British Isles, except it’s far wetter and there’s no Disneyworld. Klappentext If you’re looking for the best biscuit to dunk in your tea, the ideal temperature at which to serve real ale or the perfect pasty for your trip to the seaside, you either   A)      Have been desperately seeking a book exactly like this one or, B)      Have secretly become British without realizing it.   If you chose A, congratulations, you are an Anglophile! And, if you chose B, don’t panic. With the help of  Stuff Brits Like , you will soon discover the joy of these and many more delightful British peculiarities and can develop an upper lip as stiff as any you’ve seen on  Downton Abbey .   British native Fraser McAlpine set out to do for his countrymen what Stuff Parisians Like did for their neighbors across the channel—offering a guide to their particular tastes and eccentricities with all the cheeky wit you might expect from the people who gave you Noël Coward and Eddie Izzard.   You may know to say football instead of soccer and crisps instead of chips. You may even know why taking the piss is more fun and less unsanitary than it sounds. But with Stuff Brits Like , you’ll be ready for the next pub quiz in no time. Leseprobe Introduction ¦ Let us start this preposterous journey in the most British way imaginable: with a series of meandering apologies and caveats. I don’t know what it is about a book like this, but it seems you can’t make huge, sweeping, lawn-mower generalizations about the likes and loves of an entire nation without slicing up the odd precious and unique orchid here and there, and for that, I am truly sorry. It would probably have been easier to write a book called Stuff Brits Don’t Like . That would have taken no time to compile and run to several volumes, such is the national zeal for complaining and taking things to task, but it’s not as if the Internet is short of people showing their displeasure, so it’s probably best to leave them to it. And while we’re shutting doors in people’s faces, this book can only be a personal journey. It wasn’t subject to a public vote and there won’t be a chance to suggest subsequent chapters. People born and bred in the British Isles won’t always recognize themselves on every page; there will be lots of points along the way where, if this were a blog, the comments section would blaze with outrage and correction (see: Pedantry). But that’s because one book cannot hope to convey the full range of enthusiasms in a nation as endlessly and joyfully provincial as the United Kingdom. Heck, I can’t even get them to agree on a list of favorite movies (excluding Star Wars , which is, ah, universal). So I’ve picked just five popular cinematic experiences, the ones that say something about how British people like to think about themselves. That is, if they would ever settle down and think of themselves as British in the first place. By which I mean we need to get our definitions straight. For the purposes of brevity, if not painstaking accuracy, “Britain” and “the United Kingdom” have been used interchangeably to describe the same place (the full title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). However, the United Kingdom is made up of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—and ...

Product details

• Authors: Fraser McAlpine
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.07.2015
• EAN: 9780425278413
• ISBN: 978-0-425-27841-3
• Subjects: Fiction > Comic, cartoon, humour, satire; Fiction > Comic, cartoon, humour, satire > Humour, satire, satirical comedy; Travel > Travel guides > Europe