Saral Lyall moved to England for love but quickly discovered she could riff on it.

Question: Did you always intend to write a book about the British?

Lyall: I moved there, I met my husband, who’s English, and moved over there and then just kept working for the New York Times where I’d been before. And it just, you know, I’ve lived there for a while, and it just occurred to me it would be kind of interesting to be able to take some of the observations I’d made and move them forward, actually write more about the stuff I was interested in and also break free from the newspaper format and be able to kind of riff on things and swear and use my opinion, which I’m not really allowed to do in the newspaper so much.