At the beginning, I set out to discover the ‘defining characteristics of Englishness’ by closely observing distinctive regularities in English behaviour, identifying the specific hidden rules governing these behaviour patterns, and then figuring out what these rules reveal about our national character. A sort of semi-scientific procedure, I suppose. Well, systematic, at least. But despite all the confident-sounding noises I was making in the Introduction, I had no idea whether or not it would work, as this approach to understanding a national character had not been tried before.
