Britain is great. Not a shadow of doubt about it. So, why do Britain and the British people do or say or believe such grossly dumb, anomalous or eccentric things, things that ought to make any patriot"s Union-Jack underpants self-combust? An amusing, informative, and often extremely surprising book, "Gross Britain", far from trumpeting the idea of "My country right or wrong", takes a look at the paradoxes, idiosyncrasies, abnormalities, irregularities, inconsistencies, peculiarities and misapprehensions - as well as the idiocies, aberrations and gross untruths - that together form such a feature of life in contemporary Britain.