As well as perfecting your stiff upper lip, the thoroughly English person might also want to get a bit out of their comfort zone in achieving their 102 English Things to Do. How about (after having a nice tea) a spot of rioting or, braving the weather, (cue the Shipping Forecast) try bottle-kicking or cheese-rolling. There are, I hasten to add, some far gentler things to try, apologising and saying please and thankyou a lot doesn’t take much effort and we can all fail to learn another language and eat fish and chips very easily. However, punting or climbing Scafell Pike are, at my age, a bit unlikely so I shall content myself with savouring an English apple but I absolutely refusing to do the very last challenge, boiling vegetables for as long as it takes to lose flavour, texture and colour – I mean to say - that’s just going too far.
Packed with suggestions that will spur even the most lethargic reader to leap from their favourite armchair and express their Englishness (perhaps by buying a gnome, needlessly apologising, or going to a beer festival – or all three), 102 English Things to Do is also a delightful and insightful portrait of the English national character.
This beautifully illustrated and charming book (to boast in a very un-English manner) deserves a place in every English home – and will entertain and enlighten the mystified outsider in search of a key to the that most elusive of qualities: Englishness.
Alex Quick is the '102 series' pseudonym of a well-known English writer of fiction and non-fiction. He is the author of 102 Free Things to Do and 102 Ways to Write a Novel.
