Sarah Lyall - The Anglo Files

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The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British

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New York Times Bestseller

Read an Excerpt
Introduction: Lunch with an Earl

Dispatches from the new Britain: a slyly funny and compulsively readable portrait of a nation finally refurbished for the twenty-first century.

Sarah Lyall, a young reporter for the New York Times, move to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for her amusing and incisive dispatches from her adopted country. As she came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), she found that she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life. The roller-coaster decade of Tony Blair’s New Labour government was an increasingly materialistic time when old-world symbols of aristocratic privelege and stiff-upper-lip sensibility collided with modern consumerism, overwrought emotion, and a new (but still unsuccessful) effort to make the trains run on time. Appearing a half-century after Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige, Lyall’s book is a brilliantly witty account of twenty-first-century Britain that will be recognized as a contemporary classic.

In the Media

NPR Morning Edition (Sept. 23, 2008)

Interview with TIME Magazine (Sept. 4, 2008)

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Published by W. W. Norton & Company, August 2008
$15.95, 304 pages, paperback, ISBN: 978-0-393-33476-0

Buy the Book

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Praise for The Anglo Files

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“The Anglo Files should be handed out, as a public service, in the immigration line at Heathrow.” - MALCOLM GLADWELL, author of Blink

“Superb social and cultural anthropology by a reporter who has lived among her subjects without losing her sense of wonder for them. Imagine Margaret Mead channeling Jon Stewart and you have Sarah Lyall.” - ERIC LAX, author of Conversations with Woody Allen

“By turns wry, mordant, affectionate, bitter, and sweet. I never miss any of her dispatches, because, while they manage to remind me why I left, they also contrive to make me feel occasionally homesick.” - CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, author of God Is Not Great

“For years now, Sarah Lyall has been the writer observer of the English and their curious habits. Now she’s written a book that takes her game to an entirely new level. It’s funny, it’s delightful, and anyone with even a passing interest in these strange people should read it.” - MICHAEL LEWIS, author of Moneyball

Reviews

“A clever, sharp, and very witty account of all things British, written by a stunchly American transplant.” - SHELF AWARENESS

“Sarah Lyall tracks the odd and endearing behaviors that help us measure our own quirks and cultural obsessions.” - LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Amusing and well-written.” - USA TODAY

“A good, funny book.” - BOOKFORUM

Writing

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Sarah Lyall is a London correspondent for the New York Times. Subscribe to receive her most recent articles via RSS.

Sarah Lyall

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Sarah Lyall grew up in New York City and is a London correspondent for the New York Times. She lives there with her husband, the writer Robert McCrum, and their two daughters. The Anglo Files is her first book.

Contact

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Email: Sarah Lyall
theanglofiles@gmail.com

Rights: Kathy Robbins, Literary Agent
kclose@robbinsoffice.com

Media: Elizabeth Riley, Publicist
eriley@wwnorton.com