A "CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION" -- BOOKPAGE

"J.R. Daeschner knows more than a little something about participatory journalism. In True Brits, he travels the United Kingdom in search of all things eccentric and extraordinary.

"With little regard to safety or sanity, Daeschner squares off for a shin-kicking contest in the Cotswolds and snorkels bravely through the murky muck and cold of a Welsh bog. He makes his way to every village festival and small-town celebration he can, knowing that such events survive 'because they reinforce a sense of identity, community, and continuity.'

"More importantly, he understands that 'people take an inordinate pride in the local idiosyncrasies that distinguish them from a thousand other places: they're proud to be peculiar.' In Daeschner's world, this is certainly cause for celebration." -- BOOKPAGE

"Daeschner, an American who has spent most of his adult life in England, has written a fun collection of centuries-old local sporting traditions in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that can best be described as absurd yet intriguing to the outsider.

"Such fascinating competitions as shin kicking in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, gurning (making the ugliest facial expression) in Egremont in far northwest England, and riding a bicycle through the bogs of Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales, make for captivating reading.

"Daeschner enhances his travelogue with interviews from participants and local residents, providing firsthand accounts of both their bravery and human lunacy. He attempts to trace how these sports came to be and gives a little history of each highlighted community.

"An insightful travel narrative in the tradition of Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Small Island'; recommended for public and academic libraries." -- THE LIBRARY JOURNAL

Bill Bryson meets Tony Hawks   
Stephanie Merritt on True Brits

True Brits
JR Daeschner

'Once you've lost your history, you've lost your identity.' So runs the sober epigraph to this immensely funny guide to British customs, best described in publisher-speak as Bill Bryson meets Tony Hawks.

The quote comes not, as you might expect, from a Conservative life peer or a Save The Pound enthusiast, but from an unnamed West Country farmer defending the practice of rolling an enormous cheese down a hill.

Ah, the English - we've always known they were a funny lot, ever since Bryson came over from the US and pointed it out. JR Daeschner is also American, and has set out to find all the quirkiest British customs that Bryson missed. Thus he hurtles from the Haxey Hood, a 300-man annual football match in Lincolnshire, to the ancient sport of shin-kicking in Chipping Campden, to the inimitable Gloucestershire spectacle of cheese-rolling and the unfeasibly still-popular festival of 'Darkie Day' in Padstow.

Daeschner affects the foreign ingenue, and the intrinsic absurdity of these activities is a gift to any comic writer, but he does more than send up the silliness of the English. He is also attempting a bit of cultural analysis, subtly questioning the role of tradition - is it harmless local colour, or can it sometimes reinforce more pernicious ideas of mob mentality, tribalism, entrenched conservatism and - in the case of Darkie Day - outright racial mockery?

Well, yes, obviously, but what Daeschner takes away from his trip is a renewed admiration for English eccentricity and, in particular, the commitment and community spirit of the ordinary people who make sure that these traditions endure.