Sarah Lyall Livres

In A Field Guide to the English, Lyall strides her way readably, eloquently and perceptively across the social, political and cultural landscape of contemporary England. In a narrative studded with memorable anecdote and rich in humour, she explores themes as diverse as peers, politics, the media, understatement, the weather, and England's relationship with animals, alcohol and sex. She ponders such matters as the missing link between the famous British reserve and our equally famous predilection for hooliganism, the strange process by which a collection of naughty schoolboys pass Parliamentary motions, and the revelations that history did not start in 1492, and that Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent in Mary Poppins was a travesty. Sarah connects our essential toughness to Bronco loo paper, the Earl of Uxbridge losing his leg at Waterloo, not turning the central heating on until mid-November, and the fact that 'some of my husband's favourite puddings have stale white bread as the main ingredient.'

“Should be handed out . . . in the immigration line at Heathrow.” —Malcolm Gladwell Sarah Lyall moved to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for amusing and sharp dispatches on her adopted country. Confronted by the eccentricities of these island people (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers), she set about trying to figure out the British. Part anthropological field study and part memoir, The Anglo Files has already received great acclaim and recognition for the astuteness, humor, and sensitivity with which the author wields her pen.