The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British | Sarah Lyall

The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British | Sarah Lyall | A Fond But Caustic (And Hilarious) Look At The British

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The Anglo Files: A...

	The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British Sarah Lyall W. W. Norton, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Dispatches from the new Britain: a slyly funny and compulsively readable portrait of a nation finally refurbished for the twenty-first century.

Sarah Lyall, a reporter for the New York Times, moved to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for her amusing and incisive dispatches on her adopted country. As she came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), she found that she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life. The roller-coaster decade of Tony Blair's New Labor government was an increasingly materialistic time when old-world symbols of aristocratic privilege and stiff-upper-lip sensibility collided with modern consumerism, overwrought emotion, and a new (but still unsuccessful) effort to make the trains run on time. Appearing a half-century after Nancy Mitford's classic Noblesse Oblige, Lyall's book is a brilliantly witty account of twenty-first-century Britain that will be recognized as a contemporary classic.

"The Anglo Files should be handed out, as a public service, in the immigration line at Heathrow." -Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

"When Sarah Lyall married an Englishman and moved to London ten years ago, few around her realized she was a modern-day Tocqueville?otherwise they would have been much more guarded. The happy result is The Anglo Files, a razor-sharp, hilarious, wickedly insightful, decidedly biased account of Everything British."? Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair

"Superb social and cultural anthropology by a reporter who has lived among her subjects without losing her sense of wonder for them. Imagine Margaret Mead channeling Jon Stewart and you have Sarah Lyall."?Eric Lax, author of Conversations with Woody Allen

"Sarah Lyall brings all the virtues of the best American journalism, including accuracy, to the task of analysing all the vices of British society, including hypocrisy, venality and hopeless confusion about sex. She will now be hailed as one of England's supreme analysts, preparatory to her being executed on Tower Green."?Clive James, author of Cultural Amnesia

"For years now Sarah Lyall has been the wittiest observer of the English and their curious habits. Now she's written a book that takes her game to an entirely new level. It's funny, it's delightful and anyone with even a passing interest in these strange people should read it." -Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball

"By turns wry, mordant, affectionate, bitter and sweet. I never miss any of her dispatches because, while they manage to remind me why I left, they also contrive to make me feel occasionally homesick." -Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great

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Great item/great service

I not only enjoyed the book but was totally surprised by the level of professionalism from the dealer.

A Fond But Caustic (And Hilarious) Look At The British

Sarah Lyall is an American journalist married to a British journalist. The Anglo Files is part memoir, part traveler's advisory, part hate mail, and part love affair. If that seems like a lot to pack into a 263 page book not including index, it would be in the hands of a less gifted writer. Lyall's gift for sardonic observation and wry commentary is ably displayed here.

There are 14 chapters with snicker inducing titles like "Honorable Members" and "Invasion of the Hedgehog People", each examining a different foible easily encountered in present day Great Britain. Sometimes Lyall discusses subjects, like British class structure, that have been endlessly dissected by other writers, but her observations are still fresh and enjoyable. At other times Lyall tackles British traits which are less familiar to most Americans, such as the appalling lack of dental care and hygiene. While these chapters have a tendency to discomfit the reader (I stopped halfway through the chapter on teeth to floss thoroughly), they are nevertheless highly amusing. I suppose my favorite chapter has to be "More Than A Game", about cricket, because it recalled a bewildering afternoon I once spent at Lord's, accompanied by a British friend who did his best to explain what was going on, to no avail. And in light of current economic events Lyall's examination of the recent British boom, driven by inflated housing prices and disreputable lending practices, have a fresh clarity and significance.

I've been a rabid Anglophile (some say Anglomane) for many years, and while some of the material about drinking and chavs and yobs made me wince, I'll treasure The Anglo Files because because beneath the caustic commentary and wry comparisons Lyall's deep appreciation for that still green and pleasant land (in between rain showers)shines through.

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The Anglo Files

It was so true and so funny and should be required reading for anyone boarding a plane to England. I loved it.

UNwarranted Nastiness

I was looking for a light, entertaining book discussing the foibles of our friends across the pond but instead many of the chapters exude an undeserved cruel twist about the British people as a whole. I pity her poor English husband who must live with someone who feels so superior! Granted, there is much to laugh about in this book but some of the humor feels forced. I have traveled to England many times in my lifetime and have many good friends there so I feel qualified to say that I wish Sarah had written this book with more love in her heart and less outright criticism.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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