In Pursuit of the English

In the early post-war years, Doris Lessing left her native Southern Africa in search of a grail - a life of glamour and refinement that she naively believed England offered everyone. A fascinating, hilarious memoir of her first impressions of her adopted country, 'In Pursuit of the English' brilliantly captures Lessing's constant wonder at and growing affection for the people she came to know: the working-class of the East End of London. Lusty, quarrelsome, unscrupulous and full-blooded, they were quite unlike the English she had expected to find. . .

"Quite simply a delightful book, and a joy to have in paperback. . . Because she writes with self-indulgence (though not entirely without nostalgia), the book is a true pleasure."
TIME OUT

"She is a writer to convert the frivolous from their frivolity, to connect the unconnected with their epoch."
SUNDAY TIMES

"Extraordinarily impressive."
NEW YORK TIMES

"No other writer, from any continent, has this raceless, classless fellowship combined with total physical receptiveness. . . Mrs Lessing has always been more than a regional moral messenger; she is a prospector into the minds, spirit and senses of all, imaginatively at home anywhere."
THE TIMES

"Deft, disquieting observation of the modern world."
NEW STATESMAN

"The book has the rhythm, the energy, and the demand upon the attention made by living experience."
NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE