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The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Lyall
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.49
You Save: $10.46 (42%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 896
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0393058468
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.086
EAN: 9780393058468
ASIN: 0393058468
Publication Date: August 18, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080906212818T
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Brilliant, interesting, funny September 5, 2008
Very well written indeed. I expected this to be Britain 101 (which it is) but it digs deeper and is more nuanced than that -- somewhere in the 300's or 400's course levels on what we used to call the Mother Country. Very well-written too, though the author could start including the footnoted material into her text so it would read more smoothly. Comprehensive and detailed without being plodding or ponderous. (I have dual citizenship with one English and one American parent, spent a lot of time in the UK growing up and have lived and worked there). Nice prose style; very enjoyable read. If you like it, you should also buy Stand Before Your God which is a bit darker and more personal but equally fascinating. Buy and read Ms. Lyall's book.
Spot on! September 5, 2008
For anyone who has ever spent an appreciable amount of time in England, as I have, Sarah Lyall's new book, "The Anglo Files" is as close to a perfect look as "one" (Br.) can get from an American perspective. An expatriate for more than a dozen years, Lyall has learned to cope and allowed herself to be educated, all the while shaking her head at how the British live their lives. It's the stuff of a good book.
Each chapter in "The Anglo Files" presents a different topic to be reviewed. Whether it be English men (and their alcohol consumption) cricket, cuisine, the weather or just plain British eccentricity, Lyall covers it all with a sharp wit of observation. My favorite few pages involve her description of the House of Lords. It's hysterical, giving rise to the New Yorker magazine's occasional squib, "There will always be an England".
While much of the book is a gentle poke at British culture and language, the author gets into the psyche of her host country and is dutifully repectful of the way the British "rally 'round"...whether it be in war, or more recently, the death of Princess Diana. Saving this bit until near the end, Lyall reaches a poignant moment and it's one of her best in the book. I highly recommend "The Anglo Files". The narrative is crisp, funny, and I must say, accurate!
Spot On August 25, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Great read for anyone who doesn't understand British sensibility. I loved it. I lived in Greater London in the 90's and had the luck of sending my two kids to different schools, a state school and a public school. If only I had had this book before I went I could have saved myself a bit of grief, but then would have missed out on my best laughs. I love every thing about the UK and its people. Lyall shared the best bits and brought back so many lovely memories I think I need to go book a trip back. Expensive beyond belief but beans on toast is always on the menu.
 Riddance August 23, 2008
1 out of 24 found this review helpful
All our lives, Americans have been told that those people are cut from finer cloth and molded from finer clay than us. Sarah Lyall didn't have to emigrate to be one of them. She writes for the Times.
An American in England August 23, 2008
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
Ms. Lyall has rewritten her columns of observations on all thing British and recycle them into this witty and fun book. The author moved across the Atlantic for her marriage and her readjustment to a new culture is the subject of this book. Easily read in an evening, "The Anglo Files" is like Garrison Keillor writing about Minnesota -- full of warmth and acceptance for those who are a little bit different from Americans.
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