British As A Second Language [Kindle Edition]

If you think this is a funny book about England and its natives, think again. And buy Kate Fox's "Watching the English" instead. What Bennun's book is, first and foremost, is a memoir of sorts, covering the author's student years in England in the 1980s with the occasional flashback to growing up in Kenya as a white person whose apparently Jewish parents (Bennun all but hides this fact as if it were embarrassing) left South Africa because they disapproved of apartheid. Bennun went to Sussex University and then worked his way through several very hip jobs with very hip music magazines. It's amazing how someone so relatively young and with so much (former) street credibility could have turned into an old fogey so quickly. Tedious rants of the "children should be seen, not heard" sort make up one half of the book and read like a letter to The Times by some retired army general ("country is going to the dogs"). I wouldn't be surprised if Bennun votes Conservative by now. The other half of the book consists of verbose, much overstretched anecdotes about life at a the editorial office of a hip music magazine, the Brighton student scene of the 1980s etc. They may at times be funny but then, by far not as funny as the author clearly thinks. And waaaaaay too long at that. Bennun's favorite, basically only stylistic tool is being hyperbolic - which gets pretty old pretty quickly. The 300 page book is like a box of chocolates - if you have one or two, you might actually be delighted. After eating the entire box, you'll be sick.

Personally I found this book to be an absolute delight. Yes, it drips with sharp wit and acerbic observations about the British way of life, but I never once found the writing to be mordant or even disrespectful towards us Brits.. but perhaps I'm not sensitive enough!

Having spent a large portion of his formative years abroad, I believe Mr. Bennun has developed his Britishness well - whether he wanted to or not - in particular the dry, sagacious wit.

In my opinion, this book is superbly written, very perceptive and fascinatingly funny at times. Well worth a look...

David Bennun grew up in Kenya and came to the UK to go to the University of Sussex. He expresses some surprise that he found out relatively little about this country until after he had left university. Well, dur (comme l'on dit maintenant) - you can find out many things at university, but first-hand experience of real life doesn't come high on the menu, even for budding sociologists!

The descriptions of student life on the university campus and in Brighton are true to life (apparently not much changed two decades on from when I knew them), but I increasingly found myself speedreading the book. Bennun seems to progress remarkably quickly from student via muso journalist (working for a lads' magazine, presumably Loaded) to premature Victor Meldrew.

The most serious theme in the book concerns racial prejudice. During Bennun's early years in the UK, many people mis-heard his Kenyan accent as South African, and as he was white they automatically assumed he was an apartheid supporter. This was particularly hurtful for him, as his parents (of Jewish origin) had left South Africa because his father "had felt it expedient to leave when the South African government realised he was carting explosives around in the boot of his car for the ANC" [to quote Amazon's description of another of his books]. Bennun describes how he has worked to make his accent sound English, mainly to avoid being thought South African.