Paxman Jeremy. - The English: A Portrait of a People

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire and educated at Cambridge. He is an award-winning journalist who spent ten years reporting from overseas, notably for Panorama. He is the author of four books, all of which are published by Penguin: Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain?, Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life, The English and The Political Animal. He is currently the presenter of Newsnight and University Challenge.

This book began life in conversations some time before the Boer War with Susan Watt. Susan was then my editor at Michael Joseph, and it is to her that I owe my biggest editorial debt. After she moved on, Tom Weldon had loads of helpful suggestions and saw the book through production. My other big debt is to my family, who have had to put up with this cuckoo for the last few years, with scarcely a murmur of complaint.

In the course of research I interviewed over 200 people, and where I have quoted from interviews in the text, it is, I think, obvious. Most conversations were valuable more for the ideas they provoked than anything else. It seems unfair to single out individuals from among the large number who helped, but I should like to thank in particular Raymond Blanc, James Landale, John Cleese, Ian Jack, John and Penny Mortimer, Sir Roy Strong, Dr Nick Tate, Ian Smith, Helen McManners, John Simpson and Patrick Hanks at the Oxford University Press, Hugh Massingberd for the generous use of his contacts book, Dr George Steiner, George Walden, Lord Dahrendorf, Prof. Michael Dummett, David Willetts MP, Jim Gray, Mary-Anne Sieghart, Canon Donald Gray, the Rt Revd Richard Harries, Patrick Wright, the Revd Donald Gray, Melvyn Bragg, the Revd David Edwards, Prof. David Starkey, John Gillingham, West de Wend Fenton, William Plowden, Roderick Gradidge, Christopher Driver, Simon Raven, Dr Keith Thompson, Sir John Smith, Edmund Staunton, Margot Lawrence, Shani dCruze, Roger Bolton, Ivo Dawnay, Henry Porter, David Twistan-Davies, Paul Boateng MP, Paul Hardacre and Ewan McCallum at the Met Office, Elsie Owusu, James Blitz, Prof. John Burrow, Stephen Haseler, Bernie Grant MP, Mark Fisher MP, Michael Wharton, Sebastian Faulks, C. H. Sisson, Jessica Rees, Edward Faulks, Julian Turton, Andrew Roberts, Dr Trevor Bennett, Prof. Anthony King, Sir Denys Lasdun, Gavin Stamp, Richard North, John Armit, Andrew Mitchell, Ned Dawney, Robert Hewison, Lord Runcie, John Fowles, Georgia Langton, Richard Curtis, Peter Collison, the Revd Donald Reeves, Timothy Garton Ash, Prof. Richard Hoggart, Prof. Bernard Crick, Ruthie and Richard Rogers, Blanche Blackwell, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Roy Faiers, Sir Bob Horton, Tony Knox, John Eliot Gardiner, Jacqueline Gough (Hartlepool Borough Council), the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Charities Aid Foundation, the Royal Horticultural Society, Blenheim Palace, and Suffolk Record Office.

I could not have managed the book without the enthusiastic research help at one time or another of Ade Thomas and Hettie Judah. I am grateful, too, to Julian Holloway and Dr Jon Lawrence of Liverpool University, who read the finished manuscript and spotted at least some of the blemishes. Those which remain are all my own work.