Why the Dutch are Different

To whom? Surinamers? Italians? Latin Americans? A more accurate title would be Why the Dutch are the Dutch, but I don’t suppose that would be as much of an eye-catcher on the bookshop shelves.

That said, this is a terrific book. Constructing each chapter around incidents and events he’s personally observed – a football match, the arrival of Sinterklaas, Carnival – Ben Coates offers a brisk, ever-so-readable account of Dutch history –  past and present.

You’ll find out about the country’s never-ending battle against the water, its empire in Asia, the strange religious divisions between Catholic and Protestant, and what happened when the Nazis invaded in 1940. A lot of this I knew; just as much I didn’t. The same goes for the more recent past.

I was living in the country when Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were murdered, and I followed those events closely. I understand how the famed Dutch tolerance evolved. But I know next to nothing about Dutch football and couldn’t name more than two players if you put a gun to my head. (Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten.) Now I can prop up a bar with the best of them and bang on about Total Football.

It's by no means an academic account but, once you’ve read it you’ll have a good understanding of why the country is the way it is. And you’ll see it for more than that place where everyone wears clogs, the streets reek of marijuana and there’s nothing to eat but round red cheese and tulips.

Far more.