According to a reliable (English) source, the book with the title
The English: Are They Human? by Gustaaf Johannes Renier, published 1931 by Williams & Norgate Ltd, is quite entertaining. It is described at
goodreads.com as
a resident alien's views on the English:
"In
expressing my opinion of the English I shall be frank. If I see much
that is admirable, I see much also that is imperfect and not
infrequently my sense of this imperfection has been heightened by the
conviction of so many English people that nothing but perfection dwells
within their shores....
I shall be doing no more than thinking
aloud, and those I address are those who move around me, the English
among whom I live, whose interests are mine, and whose prejudices, to
some extent, I have adopted. Honest I shall be, in so far as I shall try
honestly to express my bias.
I am speaking about the English,
not about the British. There is no question in this work of the Scots,
proud, intelligent, religious and unfathomable. Nor the Welsh, minute,
musical, clever and tempermental. I am not writing about the charming
untruthful, bloodthirsty and unreliable Irish. I shall be exclusively
concerned with the English, the unintellectual, restricted, stubborn,
steady, pragmatic, silent and reliable English."
According to
goodreads.com,
G. J. Renier
(1892–1962) was born in Flushing, Netherlands, the child of a Dutch
father and a French-speaking Belgian mother. He was sent to school in
Antwerp and Leuven, and studied History at the University of Ghent,
beginning a doctorate under Henri Pirenne. At the outbreak of the First
World War he fled to England, and remained there working as a
journalist, biographer and translator, before completing a doctorate
under Pieter Geyl. In 1936 he succeeded Geyl as Reader in Dutch History
at University College London, retiring in 1957.
