The peculiarity of the English, A personal view

Alan Macfarlane is Emeritus Professor of Anthropological Science at the University of Cambridge, a Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. He has published more than forty books, including more than a dozen on the English. Alan Macfarlane writes as both an insider (British parents, brought up and educated and living in England, working on English history), and as an outsider (five-eighths Scots, working as an anthropologist in Nepal, Japan and China). The book explains very simply some of the key features that those who wish to understand the English might like to know about, and what has caused some of the special nature of the English. It is a companion to 'Understanding the English, A personal A-Z'.