Norbury - Britain - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

Copyright 2015 Kuperard
Revised and updated edition 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Culture Smart! is a registered trademark of Bravo Ltd.

ISBN 978 1 85733 715 0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-85733-716-7

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain
by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd
59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8446 2441
www.culturesmart.co.uk
Inquiries:

Series Editor Geoffrey Chesler
Design Bobby Birchall

: Trooping the Colour on the Queens official birthday,Horse Guards Parade, London. Alamy

Images on the following pages reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license: User:Colin/Wikimedia Commons.

Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license: Theospence.

Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license: John Morris.

v3.1

PAUL NORBURY is a publisher, editor, and author who has written on international business practice and procedure, with particular reference to Japan and East Asia. He has specialized in publishing books on intercultural communications. Whereas previously he has focused on explaining Asian culture to Westerners (he is the author of the best-selling guide Culture Smart! Japan), in this book he draws on his experience as a mediator and interpreter to introduce his native Britain to visitors from abroad.

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand.
For further information and latest titles visit
www.culturesmart.co.uk

The publishers would like to thank CultureSmart!Consulting for its help in researching and developing the concept for this series.

CultureSmart!Consulting creates tailor-made seminars and consultancy programs to meet a wide range of corporate, public-sector, and individual needs. Whether delivering courses on multicultural team building in the USA, preparing Chinese engineers for a posting in Europe, training call-center staff in India, or raising the awareness of police forces to the needs of diverse ethnic communities, it provides essential, practical, and powerful skills worldwide to an increasingly international workforce.

For details, visit www.culturesmartconsulting.com

CultureSmart!Consulting and CultureSmart! guides have both contributed to and featured regularly in the weekly travel program Fast Track on BBC World TV.

In recent years Britain has experienced unimagined and accelerated changefrom a population explosion due principally to EU immigration, with consequent strains on housing, welfare, education, and jobs, to a new political settlement based on coalition government, and the devolution of greater powers to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh following the No vote to independence at the 2014 Scottish referenduman event that generated enormous passion and attracted the highest turnout of voters in modern history.

There is constant speculation in the media about the shape of the futureincluding Britains membership of the EU, the impact of what is now a multicultural society, and the consequences of the 2015 general election. However, what can be said with certainty is that Britain, as ever, will manage the change. It will make do, muddle through, somehow accommodate and absorb what it has to in order to secure the future and keep its traditions and core values intact.

The peculiar character of the British people has always intrigued visitors, who have described them as enigmatic, idiosyncratic, eccentric, reserved, and quaintall of which contain a certain amount of truth. Britain has a reputation abroad for being insular and different, sometimes annoyingly so. Equally, for the British there continues to be pride in the past and a kind of nostalgia for earlier timesepitomized in the highly praised opening ceremony of the London Olympics of 2012, and the very high ratings that period drama on television achieves.

As a family of nations, the British are inventive, reflective, good humored, funny, focused, and tenaciousqualities that have led to remarkable outcomes, such as the largest empire in history, a monarchy that has lasted more than a thousand years, and a parliamentary democracy that has been the template for the rest of the world.

Britain has produced some of the worlds greatest literature, gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, was the source of most of the worlds major sports, and has invented countless items of technology that have advanced the quality of life. It has won more Nobel Prizes than the countries of the rest of Europe combined, and has done more than any other nation to unite the worldfirst through its great trading empire, and then through the legacy of the English language. Its role and influence today has changed, perhaps declined. Yet Britain remains the worlds sixth largest economy, and its entrepreneurial and highly creative culture continues to attract and fascinate visitors.

Culture Smart! Britain aims to help you gain that much more from your stay in these islands through a greater understanding of the quirks, customs, values, and changing ways of British life.