Book excerpt: Over the past two hundred years German education policy and practice has attracted interest in England. Policy makers have used the 'German example' both to encourage change and development and to warn against certain courses of action. This monograph provides the first major analysis of the rich material from government reports (including work by Matthew Arnold), the press, travel accounts, memoirs, scholarly publications and the archives to uncover the nature of the English fascination with education in Germany, from 1800 to the end of the twentieth century. David Phillips traces this story and uses recent work in theories of educational policy 'borrowing' to analyze the reception of the German experience and its impact on the development of English education policy.