The Angry Island
eBook - ePub

The Angry Island

Hunting the English

  1. 240 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Angry Island

Hunting the English

About this book

Think of England, and anger hardly springs to mind as its primary national characteristic. Yet in The Angry Island, A. A. Gill argues that, in fact, it is plain old fury that is the wellspring for England's accomplishments. The default setting of England is anger. The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly livid much of the time. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy, and fractious. They can be mildly annoyed, really annoyed and, most scarily, not remotely annoyed. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations. The English itch inside their own skins. They feel foreign in their own country and run naked through their own heads. 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, cul-de-sacs 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. The Angry Island by turns attacks and praises the English, bringing up numerous points of debate for Anglophiles and anyone who wonders about the origins of national identity. This book hunts down the causes and the results of being the Angry Island.

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Information

Index

accents
see also Received Pronunciation(RP)
Achilles
Act of Union
Adelaide
Afghanistan
Africa
agriculture
organic
airports, queues at
Albert, Prince Consort
alcohol
binge-drinkers of
hangovers and
teetotalism and
topper-uppers and
Alexander the Great
Alfred, King of England
Americans
accents of
see also United States
American War of Independence
Amnesty International
Amsterdam
anger
animals
liberationists of
Annigoni, Pietro
antiques
Apache Indians
apologies
Arabia
Arabs
aristocracy
see also royal portraits
Artists’ Rifles
Atkins, Tommy
Attenborough, David
Attlee, Clement
Auld Alliance
Austen, Jane
Australia, Australians

Bambara, Toni Cade
Bannockburn
battlefields
Bauhaus house
BBC
BBC English, see Received Pronunciation (RP)
Behan, Brendan
Belgians
Bellerophon, HMS
Benn, Tony
Beowulf
Berne
best man’s speeches
Betjeman, John
Bible
binge-drinkers
Birmingham
accents of
Black Woman, The (Bambara)
Blake, William
Blenheim
Bloomsbury
Board of the Great Western Railway
Boston, Mass
Bosworth, Battle of
Bounty, HMS
Bourneville
Brandlehowl Wood
BrasĆ­lia
Brazil
ā€œBreak of Day in the Trenchesā€(Rosenberg)
Brief Encounter
Brigade of Guards
Brighton Pavilion
British Army
see also World War I
British Empire
dissolution of
British Isles
Brixton
B...

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. The Angry Island
  5. Face
  6. Voice
  7. Memorials
  8. Class
  9. Humor
  10. Cotswolds
  11. Sorry
  12. Animals
  13. Drink
  14. Gardens
  15. Sport
  16. Political Correctness
  17. Queues
  18. Letchworth Garden City
  19. Nostalgia
  20. Afterword
  21. Acknowledgments
  22. Index
  23. Copyright