One Kiss or Two?
Every encounter begins with a greeting. Be it a quick ‘Hello!’ or the somewhat longer and gracious ‘Sula manchwanta galunga omugobe!’ shaking hands or shaking, well, rather more private parts of our anatomy, we have been doing it many times daily for thousands of years. It should be the most straightforward thing in the world, but this apparently simple act is fraught with complications, leading to awkward misunderstandings and occasionally even outright violence.
In the illuminating and entertaining One Kiss or Two? Andy Scott goes down the rabbit hole to take a closer look at what greetings are all about. In looking at how they have developed, he discovers a kaleidoscopic world of etiquette, body-language, evolution, neuroscience, anthropology and history. Through in-depth research and his personal experiences, and with the help of experts, Scott takes us on a captivating journey through a subject far richer than we might have expected.
Andy Scott has greeted people in over 60 countries. He originally trained as a historian, gaining a PhD from Cambridge University and holding visiting fellowships at Yale University, before joining the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in 2009, where he worked on a range of domestic and international projects. He has since served as a diplomat in Libya and Sudan, and acted as a consultant to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He is currently a Conflict and Stabilisation Adviser in the UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit. He lives in London, but still calls a small village in Suffolk home.