Alumni and guests are invited to join the Cambridge Society of Paris, for their talk by Alan Macfarlane & Fabienne Bonnet - Discovering the Peculiarity of the English.

Alan Macfarlane (Worcester Oxford (MA & PhD), King’s Cambridge (Fellow), London School of Economics (MPhil), SOAS (PhD).) was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Alan is an anthropologist and historian, and a Professor Emeritus of King’s College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China. He has focused on comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. In recent years he has become increasingly interested in the use of visual material in teaching and research. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society.

How did I become interested in English? My colonial background and birth in India; my schooling in English boarding schools and training in history at Oxford; my anthropological investigations in Nepal, Japan and China; my interest in grand social theory and particularly in French commentators – Montaigne, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Taine and Marc Bloch among others. And what are the peculiarities? Some outlined in ‘Understanding the English A-Z’, and others, which I will briefly sketch in, in a sequel ‘The Peculiarity of the English’ – Games, Humour, Class, Education, Empire and more.

Society Member Fabienne Bonnet, the translator of ‘Understanding the English’ will also talk about the process of translation of the book into French.

Fabienne’s background is St Thecle, Chamalières (73), American Field Service scholar, Waukesha WI. (74) MPhil Montpellier (79), Lectrice King’s Cambridge (90-94), Bye-Fellow, Homerton (2011-2016), Faculty of English, affiliated supervisor literary translation (1994-2014) (Franciscan. Life vows. 2001)