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| The English Year | 
 enlarge | Author: Steve Roud
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £3.95
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New (24) from £4.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 7939
Media: Paperback
Pages: 688
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 1.6
ISBN: 0141021063
EAN: 9780141021065
ASIN: 0141021063
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: DISPATCHED FROM THE UK WITHIN 48 HOURS BY ROYAL MAIL, OVERSEAS ORDERS SENT BY AIR MAIL.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Flag-planting for the Multicult October 23, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I applaud 'Steve' Roud for a compilation both breathtaking in its scope and eye-catching in its layout and attention to detail. I also condemn him for cynically including material that has no connection to the English year, and but for which this might have an excellent book.
Excellent it isn't, in spite of good writing, first-class illustrations (many in colour), and entries which commendably avoid the irritating brevity - sometimes no more than a paragraph or two for obsolete festivals - that often blights publications of this kind.
There's the Ashen Faggot of Devon (don't ask), Whipping Toms in Leicester (it would take too long), the Bacup Coco-Nut Dancers and the Appleby Horse Fayre (this is where people on social security dress up as 'Travellers' to while away the Employment Office lunch-hour in spitting on each others' hands, muttering dark oaths and arguing about which bet to place on the 3.20 at Kempton).
There are Ploughboy and Ploughmaid processions of Fen Country, there's 'Bawming' the Thorn in the Cheshire village of Appleton, and there's Bartle Burning in West Witton, Yorkshire. I didn't know Hurling, or a variant of it, started in Devon/Cornwall. I didn't know we had an Armada Day (19th July).
Better documented staples are included, as you might expect, such as Mumming (Christmas), Shrove Tuesday and Bonfire Night (a near miss we lament to this day as a nation still run by debauched scotchmen).
The Bonfire Night (5th November) procession at Lewes is the best known in England and should be seen by everyone at least once. Here the book comes into its own, using a particularly dramatic half-page colour print which actually enhances the writing rather just complementing it.
I recall a delightful young American exchange student, bless her, fascinated as a Catholic to hear of the goings-on in darkest Sussex, returning to college white-faced and barely able to speak as a consequence of what she'd seen the night before. And may God bless the good and true English people of that lovely county. No Popery! (This, for anyone anxious to feel fashionably 'traumatized', is what's sometimes referred to as 'a bit of fun'.)
If the English as a nation appear ever so slightly unhinged we could do worse than rejoice in the fact. Certainly I thought to, if only by pushing the boat out and buying the hardcover edition. Mr Roud's earlier collaboration (with Jacqueline Simpson), a Dictionary of English Folklore, had impressed me. He knew his stuff. I felt I couldn't lose.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened the book to find a colour plate of irish (I prefer lower case) pipers swaggering through an English high street. What in god's name has the irish calendar to do with the English? What has it to do with anything at all that 'irish people living in England' like to celebrate St Patrick's Day?
Roud includes St Andrews Day too, but on the more acceptable ground of parallel English customs not strictly related to scotland's patron saint. St Patrick's Day is not acceptable. If he wanted to pander to the American market he should have written a different book.
The explanation for this nonsense lay in the introduction as it turned out. Here the writer alludes to various institutions responsible for passing on scottish, welsh and irish cultures. His view is that an absence of anything similar in England works to the nation's advantage.
Apparently the English benefit from their culture, their history and their folklore being ignored ('even derided') in that they've avoided the gimmickery and kitsch associated with 'stronger' cultural identities.
So that's all right then. But Roud goes further. He is 'proud' the English have '(n)ever taken much notice of St George's Day'. He enjoys this neglect all the more for the annoyance it causes patriots.
Thus does a man blessed with a glorious opportunity to defend a national folk culture under repeated attack from, among others, the very ethnicity he chooses to include in these pages, turn out to exemplify the same old dreary Orwellian dictum about the English and church poor boxes.
Roud's self-loathing is dressed-up as 'good taste' or anti-vulgarianism, naturally. In fact, like most liberals, he's really a snob, with the snob's characteristic scorn for one of the deepest and truest of human emotions - love of homeland and people, and the sympathy it gives for all men everywhere, irrespective of geography, race or culture, whom we know wish for themselves and their nation only what we would bestow upon our own.
Anything but patriotism darling? On the contrary. It is people like 'Steve' Roud who frighten me. It doesn't occur to this dolt that the ease with which politicians brush aside English public opinion on everything from independence to her unasked for role as milch cow to the union derives solely from the enforced anonymity he prizes.
It doesn't enter his silly head that this same official contempt is what permitted a publican of eastern European descent, and without fear of prosecution, to erect a sign outside his premises on a recent St George's Day saying 'No English' (this actually happened in Cambridgeshire). Does he even care?
Would Roud include St George's Day in a book on 'the irish year'? Not that I'm concerned by St Patrick's Day alone. Here we even get Chinese New Year thrown in for good measure. To paraphrase one classicist, 'It's a pretty poem, Mr Roud, but you mustn't call it English'.
'The English Year' is fatally compromised in my opinion. It is irrelevant that 'anomalies' are few. If the writer hasn't the first idea who we are or what a nation actually is you have to wonder whether he intends publication for us, the English, or for anyone who just happens to live in England - by no means the same thing at all.
Ignore too 'folklore awards' conferred by the same liberals who pack committees everywhere. 'The English Year' should have been a wonderful addition to any library, an aid perhaps to understanding something of who we are as a people. As it is the source is tainted, and we are left with an outrageous attempt to redefine us so we accept all that is alien as our own. Expect more 'representative' editions in future, the accent on 'fairness'.
I give this book two stars because for all its many virtues I cannot recommend what amounts to a flag-planting exercise for multiculturalism. Roud is a leftist. He is vain in a way reminiscent of conservative journalist Peter Hitchens with whom, albeit for vastly differing reasons likely as not, he shares a willingness to sacrifice his own people in order to feel better about himself and advance his career.
Roud takes liberties he wouldn't dare take with any other of the home nations in these islands. Such a pity there wasn't a book-signing. I could have thrown him thirty pieces of silver. Held in Appleby would have been even more appropriate. To be spat upon affords contempt no greater emphasis, and in this instance is scarcely any viler than the rank betrayal which warrants it.
 authoritative and readable August 30, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I bought this book for a friend, but kept it myself after being impressed by its dip-into-ability, its authority, readability and the fact that it is clearly the product of considerable research. The author has drawn widely in his search for the origins of English customs and is not afraid to dispense with a few myths along the way: if there is no evidence that a custom 'has its origins in the Middle Ages' he'll say so. An impressive piece of work.
Thoroughly fascinating May 17, 2007
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Nowadays the English are starting to wonder about their own culture and roots and Roud's useful and interesting compendium is a good place to start. Not only does it include customs still practised today like Hallaton's Hare Pie and Bottle-Kicking, but also historical events that are often mentioned in song or legend, such as Bartholomew's Fair. It's well written, beautifully illustrated and equally good for dipping into or looking something up. It serves to prove that the English are deep down not the boring, staid, polite folk the world thinks they are.
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