True Brits: A Tour of Great Britain in All Its Bog-Snorkelling, Shin-Kicking, and Cheese-Rolling Glory [Anglais] [Broché]

Daeschner, an American journalist living in England, loves strange rituals. It's better if they're centuries old and designed to promote fertility (the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance) or ward off evil (Burry Man's Day), but newly invented ones (bog snorkeling in Llanwrtyd Wells) designed for tourists are okay, too. Readers spend the first hundred pages wading through some less exciting oddities: a day of drunken skirmishes over a wad of leather (the Haxey Hood), villagers hurtling themselves off cliffs after a wheel of cheese (the Cooper's Hill Cheese Roll) and shin-kicking wrestling contests (the Cotswold Olimpicks). Perhaps these events are thrilling in person; on the page, they boil down to getting drunk, getting battered, cleaning up and getting drunk again. Fortunately, Daeschner moves onto more quirky, intriguing rituals, like Burry Man's Day, when a primordial Green Man parades the streets of South Queensferry, drinking, of course, but also carrying away the sins of grateful townspeople. Alas, Daeschner closes with two "traditions"--Bonfire Night in Lewes and Darkie Day in Padstow--that he can't quite characterize. Perhaps he's simply visited with too many eccentrics and can no longer draw a meaningful line between hate-mongers burning effigies of their enemies and good old English fun. It's an unfortunate ending to what's otherwise a light-headed romp. Photos. Agent, Lizzy Kremer at Ed Victor. (Mar.)
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...The reporting is energetic and exploratory...Atmospheric, entertaining travelogue.

FOR FANS OF BILL BRYSON, A HILARIOUS ACCOUNT OF THE ANTICS AND UTTERLY STRANGE TRADITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN. When J.R. Daeschner first witnessed cheese rolling, he was astounded. As an American who had lived in the U.K. for years, he knew the British did some odd things. However nothing could have prepared him for the sight of men and women flinging themselves off a grassy cliff in pursuit of wheels of cheese. He soon discovered that Britain has scores of seemingly lunatic acts enshrined as traditions: events with strange names like gurning (a match held since 1267 in which contestants compete to pull the ugliest facial expression); shin kicking (another breathtakingly stupid competition in which two contestants kick each other until one falls over in a pile of sheep manure); horn dancing (drunken villagers parading while adorned with deer antlers); and the ever-popular pope burning (an event in which the Pope is burned in effigy). Each of these events, and many more, is covered in this highly entertaining account of one man's journey through Britain.

Daeschner's trek through England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland is a quest to find out why ordinary people do such extraordinary things. He speaks to countless characters, catches them in action, and even takes part in the events himself. True Brits is the uproarious account of Daeschner's odyssey, in which he discovers, through these ancients pastimes, bizarre and hilarious new insights into the psyche of twenty-first-century Britain.

J.R. Daeschner was born in Colorado. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to Latin America after college, where he gained firsthand experience of Carnival, cholera, and military coups. Between blackouts and water shortages, he also freelanced for the New York Times. His journalism frequently appears in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Times to the International Herald Tribune.