The Angry Island
Foreigner Adrian Gill (a Scot) goes in search of the essence of England and the English

The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly, livid much of the time. In between the incoherent bellowing of the terraces and the pursed, rigid eye-rolling of the commuter carriage, they reach the end of their tethers and the thin end of their wedges. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy and fractious. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations.

Perhaps aware that they're living on top of a keg of fulminating fury, the English have, throughout their history, come up with hundreds of ingenious and bizarre ways to diffuse anger or transform it into something benign. Good manners and queues, roundabouts and garden sheds, and almost every game ever invented from tennis to bridge. They've built things, discovered stuff, made puddings, written hymns and novels, and for people who don't like to talk much, they have come up with the most minutely nuanced and replete language ever spoken - just so there'll be no misunderstandings. In this hugely witty, personal and readable book, A.A. Gill looks anger and the English straight in the eye.

1100330873
The Angry Island
Foreigner Adrian Gill (a Scot) goes in search of the essence of England and the English

The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly, livid much of the time. In between the incoherent bellowing of the terraces and the pursed, rigid eye-rolling of the commuter carriage, they reach the end of their tethers and the thin end of their wedges. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy and fractious. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations.

Perhaps aware that they're living on top of a keg of fulminating fury, the English have, throughout their history, come up with hundreds of ingenious and bizarre ways to diffuse anger or transform it into something benign. Good manners and queues, roundabouts and garden sheds, and almost every game ever invented from tennis to bridge. They've built things, discovered stuff, made puddings, written hymns and novels, and for people who don't like to talk much, they have come up with the most minutely nuanced and replete language ever spoken - just so there'll be no misunderstandings. In this hugely witty, personal and readable book, A.A. Gill looks anger and the English straight in the eye.

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The Angry Island

The Angry Island

by A.A. Gill
The Angry Island

The Angry Island

by A.A. Gill

Paperback

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Overview

Foreigner Adrian Gill (a Scot) goes in search of the essence of England and the English

The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly, livid much of the time. In between the incoherent bellowing of the terraces and the pursed, rigid eye-rolling of the commuter carriage, they reach the end of their tethers and the thin end of their wedges. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy and fractious. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations.

Perhaps aware that they're living on top of a keg of fulminating fury, the English have, throughout their history, come up with hundreds of ingenious and bizarre ways to diffuse anger or transform it into something benign. Good manners and queues, roundabouts and garden sheds, and almost every game ever invented from tennis to bridge. They've built things, discovered stuff, made puddings, written hymns and novels, and for people who don't like to talk much, they have come up with the most minutely nuanced and replete language ever spoken - just so there'll be no misunderstandings. In this hugely witty, personal and readable book, A.A. Gill looks anger and the English straight in the eye.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780753820964
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Publication date: 07/26/2006
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

A. A. Gill (1954-2016) was born in Edinburgh. He was the TV and restaurant critic and regular features-writer for the Sunday Times, a columnist for Esquire and contributor to Australian Gourmet Traveller. He was the author of A. A. Gill is Away, The Angry Island, Previous Convictions, Table Talk, Paper View, A. A. Gill is Further Away and The Golden Door, as well as two novels and the memoir Pour Me, which was shortlisted for the 2016 PEN Ackerley Prize. Lines in the Sand, a collection of his journalism in recent years, will be published in 2017.

Read an Excerpt

The Angry Island

Hunting the English
By A.A. Gill

Simon & Schuster

Copyright © 2007 A.A. Gill
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9781416531739

Foreword

This is a collection of prejudice. Opinions based on a lifetime's experience. Identifying what it is that makes a nation a people and not just a random collective of individuals who happen to share the same geography is a risky business, but we all know that nations are recognizable and different from each other. It's almost too obvious to dispute that Canadians are not like Brazilians and the Irish are not synonymous with the Jews. A national character, when self-defined, is the stuffing of patriotism and pride. It is also the source of umbrage when the observation is made by foreigners.

The English are the most enigmatically indecipherable people when seen from outside. Even from the inside, what is definable isn't always understandable. Their homespun enigma is itself part of the carefully engineered English mythology. When I was first considering writing this book, an American said: Oh God, please, write an owner's manual for the English. We look at them and they're so familiar, but so alien and weird. I have no idea how you make or repair an Englishman.

This isn't quite an owner's manual, but it is a series of observations drawn from having lived amongst the English but never having felt one of them. This is not a book of facts. Facts are inert things. Facts are whatpedantic, dull people have instead of opinions. Opinions are always interesting. What people deduce and make out of their own lives is what attracts and informs. Never mistake a fact for the truth. The English, of course, are inordinately fond of facts -- they hoard them and throw them through the windows of home truths. But facts are only the scaffolding, the trellis up which bright opinions are grown. So don't look for proofs here, there's precious little forensic evidence. This is just what I know to be true.

Copyright © 2005 by A. A. Gill



Continues...


Excerpted from The Angry Island by A.A. Gill Copyright © 2007 by A.A. Gill. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents


Foreword     ix
The Angry Island     1
Face     18
Voice     43
Memorials     59
Class     79
Humor     88
Cotswolds     110
Sorry     124
Animals     127
Drink     135
Gardens     143
Sport     154
Political Correctness     161
Queues     168
Letchworth Garden City     177
Nostalgia     191
Afterword     213
Acknowledgments     217
Index     219
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