JEREMY PAXMAN

A brilliantly researched, hugely entertaining study of the English by Britain's best-known broadcaster. In the light of membership of Europe, the loss of an Empire and a devolved United Kingdom, the English no longer know who they are. Covering every aspect of the English identity (from cricket to Cumberland sausages, St George to Bernie Grant, the Book of Common Prayer to Cool Britannia, John Bull to football thugs) and combining popular history with incisive interviews, Jeremy Paxman provides some fascinating and timely answers.

It's a tough business. Those political careers that don't end in defeat or disgrace often disappear into obscurity. And we seem to think of politicians as either hypocritical, power-hungry misfits or hopeless, unrealistic idealists. So why do people go into it? And why don't we like them? This is a witty, unsparing, but essentially sympathetic portrait of modern politicians and the strange world they inhabit.

To answer these crucial questions, Paxman looks for clues in the English language, literature, luke-warm religion and 'curiously passionless devotion' to cricket. He explores attitudes to Catholics, the countryside, intellectuals, food and the French. And he brings together insights from novelists, sociologists and gentleman farmers; the editor of This England magazine (launched in 1967 with the slogan 'as refreshing as a cup of tea'); a banker enthusiastic about the 'English vice' of flagellation; and a team at the OED looking for the first occurrence of phrases like 'bad hair day' and 'the dog's bollocks'. Witty, surprising, affectionate and incisive, this is a definitive portrait of a fascinating, exasperating nation at a turning point in its history.