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How England Made the English

Harry Mount`s “How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don`t Talk to Our Neighbours” is packed with astonishing facts and wonderful stories. Q. Why are English train seats so narrow? A. It`s all the Romans` fault. The first Victorian trains were built to the same width as horse-drawn wagons; and they were designed to fit the ruts left in the roads by Roman chariots. For readers of Paxman`s “The English”, Bryson`s “Notes on a Small Island” and Fox`s “Watching the English”, this intriguing and witty book explains how our national characteristics – our sense of humour, our hobbies, our favourite foods and our behaviour with the opposite sex – are all defined by our nation`s extraordinary geography, geology, climate and weather. You will learn how we would be as freezing cold as Siberia without the Gulf Stream; why we drive on the left-hand side of the road; why the Midlands became the home of the British curry. It identifies the materials that make England, too: the faint pink Aberdeen granite of kerbstones; that precise English mix of air temperature, smell and light that hits you the moment you touch down at Heathrow.Praise for Harry Mount: “Highly readable, encyclopeadic, marvellous, illuminating. Mount portrays England via dextrous excavations of its geography, geology, history and weather”. (“Independent”). “Fascinating. Mount`s an intelligent, funny and always interesting companion”. (“Daily Mail”). “Charming and nerdily fact-stuffed”. (“Guardian”). Harry Mount is the author of “Amo, Amas, Amat and All That”, his best-selling book on Latin, and “A Lust for Window Sills – A Guide to British Buildings”. A journalist for many newspapers and magazines, he has been a New York correspondent and a leader writer for the “Daily Telegraph”. He studied classics and history at Oxford, and architectural history at the Courtauld Institute. He lives in north London.

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