Description: Journalist and theater critic Hitchings (The Language Wars) takes up the curious study of proper English behavior. Manners matter to the English, yet the Daily Mail reported a study in 2008 "claiming that bad manners were the biggest problem facing society." Part social history, part cultural critique, the book moves humorously from the ancient to the modern with pithy anecdotes and amusing factoids. The tour of manners encompasses living conditions, language, social structures, innovations, and philosophy throughout centuries. This is not a book of etiquette instruction, but deconstruction.
Brief description: Henry Hitchings was born in 1974. He is the author of The Secret Life of Words, Who's Afraid of Jane Austen?, and Defining the World. He has contributed to many newspapers and magazines and is the theater critic for the London Evening Standard.
Review Quotes:
"Mr. Hitchings's trenchant prose is irresistible." --The Baltimore Sun
"[An] entertaining and informative survey of English manners past and present." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post "In this terrifically entertaining, surprisingly thoughtful book . . . Hitchings is a lively guide . . . pointing out the bizarre while inviting us to take another look at just how our conventional manners, so inevitable to us now, arose from history, circumstance, and luck." --Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe "[Henry Hitchings is] a writer of apparently limitless learning and intelligence." --The Guardian (London)