Julian Baggini is a philosopher, writer and journalist whose work encompasses a wide range of interests and styles.

Julian was awarded a PhD from University College London for his thesis on the philosophy of personal identity in 1996. He then went on to found The Philosophers' Magazine with Jeremy Stangroom, supporting himself with a portfolio of jobs that included teaching and, increasingly, journalism and writing.

His writing bore fruit in 2002, when five books he wrote, co-wrote or co-edited were published. Among the most significant of these was his first major trade book, Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the Headines (Oxford University Press) and the textbook he co-authored with Peter S. Fosl, The Philosophers' Toolkit (Blackwell), which went through several reprints in its first year.

Julian is increasingly in demand as a journalist and commentator. He writes a weekly column for the Herald (Scotland) as well as contributing articles for The Guardian, BBC News Online, Prospect, Times Education Supplement, the Observer and New Humanist, among others. He makes regular appearances on national radio and television.

Granta published WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? in October 2004, THE PIG THAT WANTS TO BE EATEN: 100 EXPERIMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY in September 2005 and WELCOME TO EVERYTOWN in March 2007.

What do the English think? Every country has a dominant set of beliefs and attitudes concerning everything from how to live a good life, how we should organize society, and the roles of the sexes. Yet despite many attempts to define our national character, what might be called the nation's philosophy has remained largely unexamined until now.

Philosopher Julian Baggini pinpointed postcode S66 on the outskirts of Rotherham, as England in microcosm - an area which reflected most accurately the full range of the nation's inhabitants, its most typical mix of urban and rural, old and young, married and single. He then spent six months living there, immersing himself in this typical English Everytown, in order to get to know the mind of a people. It sees the world as full of patterns and order, a view manifest in its enjoyment of gambling. It has a functional, puritanical streak, evident in its notoriously bad cuisine. In the English mind, men should be men and women should be women (but it's not sure what children should be).

Baggini's account of the English is both a portrait of its people and a personal story about being an alien in your own land. Sympathetic but critical, serious yet witty, "Welcome to Everytown" shows a country in which the familiar becomes strange, and the strange familiar.