Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind by Julian Baggini

My Account
Logout

Create an Evening Standard Account

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Welcome! Sign in here

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Forgot your password ?

Registration

* indicates fields that are mandatory

Email *

Password *

Confirm Password *

First name *

Surname *

Postcode *

Country *

Mobile phone number

Username *

Gender *

Year of birth *

When you sign up...

You will have access to all our online competitions, discounted offers and can post comments on our site.

You will also receive The Weekender newsletter sent every Thursday - it’s full of fantastic offers and ideas for the weekend. You can update your email preferences in your account page when you log in.

Other newsletters and emails

Homes & Property Newsletter - Yes I want to receive the weekly email with all the latest news on property in the capital

Occasionally we would also like to send you relevant emails detailing specific offers either from ourselves or carefully selected partners. If you would prefer not to receive these then please tick the appropriate boxes below. We will never pass on your details.

I do not want to receive additional offers and information from the Evening Standard

I do not want to receive additional offers and information sent by Evening Standard on behalf of carefully selected partners

Terms and Conditions

* I have read, understood and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of Evening Standard

Registration

Mail Sent for Registration Confirmation.

A confirmation email has been sent. Please activate your account by clicking on the activation link sent in your mail box.

"NO matter how grim life gets, you'll always have beer, curry, football - and sex. Well, you may not have it, but you can always read about it right here." Those words from FHM, writes Julian Baggini, are some of the most incisive about the English psyche he's read. And Baggini is a man who knows - not just a professional philosopher, but a fearless anthropologist, too. For six months he quit the chic coffee shops of Bristol for the Pizza Huts of Rotherham - the postcode with the closest demographic match to the national average. And what did he find? Well, pretty much what he expected: a world of vaguely racist footie fans, kindly old codgers and girls who shop for clothes at Asda.

Synopsis from Foyles.co.uk

What do the English think? Every country has a dominant set of beliefs and attitudes concerning everything from how to live a good life, how we should organize society, and the roles of the sexes. Yet despite many attempts to define our national character, what might be called the nation's philosophy has remained largely unexamined. Until now. Philosopher Julian Baggini pinpointed postcode S66 on the outskirts of Rotherham, as England in microcosm - an area which reflected most accurately the full range of the nation's inhabitants, its most typical mix of urban and rural, old and young, married and single.He then spent six months living there, immersing himself in this typical English Everytown, in order to get to know the mind of a people. It sees the world as full of patterns and order, a view manifest in its enjoyment of gambling. It has a functional, puritanical streak, evident in its notoriously bad cuisine. In the English mind, men should be men and women should be women (but it's not sure what children should be). Baggini's account of the English is both a portrait of its people and a personal story about being an alien in your own land. Sympathetic but critical, serious yet witty, "Welcome to Everytown" shows a country in which the familiar becomes strange, and the strange familiar.