So far, it's pretty fascinating. The book starts discussing the phenomenon of talking about the weather, identifying it as a social grooming ritual, going over the acceptable and unacceptable responses, the hierarchies of types of weather to be discussed, and also mentions the BBC's Shipping Forecast being a national ritual. Just from the subject of talking about the weather, she manages to get several tendencies, such as dislike for extremes, acceptance of eccentricity and social inhibition.
I skipped a bit further in the book, and a passage caught my eye arguing that the public mourning over Princess Diana's death, then decried as an "un-English" expression of sentiment, was characteristically English, in that there was very little wailing and no rending of clothes or melodrama, but rather a lot of orderly queueing.
I look forward to reading the rest of this book.
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