The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana [Hardcover]

Peter Hitchens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2000

Prominent English social critic Peter Hitchens writes of the period between the death of Winston Churchill and the funeral of Princess Diana, a time he believes has seen disastrous changes in English life. The Abolition of Britain is bitingly witty and fiercely argued, yet also filled with somber appreciation for what the idea of England has always meant to the West and to the world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...a cri de coeur from an honest, intelligent and patriotic Englishman, desperately worried about the corruption of his country. -- The Spectator October 1, 1999

Reading this honest and indignant account, I could not repress a twinge of fraternal solidarity. -- Christopher Hitchens

The book is a stunning elegy for the England that the Left destroyed.        -- David Horowitz, Los Angeles, July 2000.

When you read it you know ... there really is still a great ideological divide about every aspect of society.          -- The Guardian December 1999.

About the Author

Peter Hitchens is one of Britain's most controversial journalists. Prime Minister Tony Blair recently told Hitchens to "sit down and stop being bad" after a bruising encounter at a press conference. Hitchens covered the fall of communism from Moscow and East Germany, and was the London Daily Express correspondent in Washington. He presently lives with his wife and children in Oxford, England.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1st Ed. (U.S.) edition (November 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189355418X
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554184
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,115,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Hitchens is a British journalist, author, and broadcaster. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday, where he is a columnist and occasional foreign correspondent, reporting most recently from Iran, North Korea, Burma, The Congo, and China. A former revolutionary, he attributes his return to faith largely to his experience of socialism in practice, which he witnessed during his many years reporting in Eastern Europe and his nearly three years as a resident correspondent in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He lived and worked in the United States from 1993 to 1995. Hitchens lives in Oxford with his wife, Eve. They have three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad Revelation of a Very British Coup, August 3, 2001

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana (Hardcover)

An Anglophile American reading this articulate, comprehensive, chilling, manifesto is bound to have two reactions. The first will be, 'I didn't realize it was as bad as this.' The second, dawning more slowly, will be 'How long before it gets this bad *here* too?'

Peter Hitchens argues that during the last decades, broadly speaking the era between Sir Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales's in 1997, Britain was abolished. Not the land mass itself, obviously, but instead everything -- everything -- that once defined what it meant to be British. In chapter after relentless chapter, Hitchens shows the march of 'modern' PC orthodoxy through the Anglican Church, the marriage and divorce laws, the television and radio, the education system. History, the political system, the language, ancient ideas of loyalty and patriotism, virtue and service, even the very shape of the land itself ... all have within living memory been reshaped into something new, different -- and completely divorced from the past.

Many people have noted these changes. Hitchens' contribution lies in showing that the changes were not coincidental, but instead were deliberate, orchestrated even, and that many of the same activists were behind the various facets of the assaults.

Again and again, Hitchens produces evidence showing the arrogance and self-righteousness of the self-anointed 'reformers.' Again and again, they say, 'We recognize that the British people love the old ways, and that there is no popular clamour for change. Nevertheless, change we must.' Hitchens argues that what the 'reformers' have never been able adequately to answer is, 'Why?' And more to the point, 'Why was it necessary to destroy the old way, and make the new way mandatory?'

Why, indeed? Why, for example, is Britain now jailing farmers and shopkeepers for using Imperial measurements instead of metric ones? Why is the government trying to abolish trial by jury and the right to self-defense?

Sad to say, this book, while insightful and spirited, is almost unrelievedly depressing. It is literally only in the last few paragraphs of the final chapter that Hitchens offers any sort of hopeful outlook ... and even then, it is only to suggest ways to keep the future from becoming yet bleaker. What has been destroyed has been destroyed forever.

Indeed, it's sad to note that in the year or so since this book came out, things in Britain have in fact gotten worse. Tony Blair has taken yet more steps toward a presidential style of government, shoving aside still further both the monarchy and the House of Commons. I'm sure Hitchens finds no joy in being a prophet, but he seems to be, unfortunately, on the right track.

For anyone who loves Britain -- and especially for Americans whose idea of Britain is shaped by 'Masterpiece Theatre' and other PBS offerings -- this sad, wonderful book serves as the gravestone of an idealized vision, and a warning to our own country.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review From A Briton..., May 1, 2001

By 

Richard Semple (Virginia Water, Surrey, England, Great Britain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana (Hardcover)

I think, with the lack of reviews from actual British people resident in Britain under customer comments upon this book, it behoves me to put across the viewpoint that other reviewers seem to have been asking for.

The cover of Peter Hitchens' book shows the Union Jack, the flag of Great Britain, flown at half-mast. The image comes from the days after Princess Diana died and part of a nation mourned. Notably, however, another part of it clearly did not. Hitchens takes this fact and runs with it, and he is not wrong to do so. He points out that, as part of Britain poured out its emotion in a tremendous fashion, another part looked on aghast at the nakedness of sentiment being displayed. I am a mere 20 years of age, but as a passionate Brit I do not find it hard to sympathise with the point he is making here.

Most of the time we in Britain look around and things seem okay. Occasionally we wonder whether things aren't just a little bit wrong. In the aftermath of Princess Diana's death, some of us felt like strangers in our own land. The author is right to state that people are asking now and may continue to ask in ever greater numbers: exactly what happened to the country they thought they grew up in? The point is as true for all the other English-speaking nations in the world as it is for Britain.

Certainly, as some reviewers have pointed out, it would have to be conceded that Hitchens on occasion puts on rose-tinted spectacles when examining a British past often characterised by impoverishment and occasionally meaningless sacrifice. But he is no fool, and if he sometimes lapses into sentiment then we ought to forgive him if only for the many other highly relevant and prescient points he makes in this work. Further to that, he may look at Britain and see only England, but to all Americans who might not be aware of this fact (including, apparently, some reviewers here), England is absolutely the dominant constituent part of the United Kingdom and in fact houses 85% of the inhabitants - this much has not changed drastically for a century, so if England is all he sees, he isn't missing too much.

Foremost in Hitchens' firing line is what essentially boils down to the new liberal orthodoxy. To any Americans who have read or might read this book, unless you are a passionate Democrat you might well recognise the point Hitchens is making here. In all its forms, be it in its control of state-run schools, its management of state healthcare, its changes to the justice system, and many others, the politicians who have sought to change things for the better have actually changed things for the worse. In Britain, state education has noticeably collapsed in the quality of its output since the left-wing destruction of selective schools in favour of comprehensives. The National Health Service in Britain has been a monument to folly almost since it started but has become so much the religion of Britain that not even right-wingers would think of challenging its inherent absurdity - that being the misguided that health is a right, and thus free healthcare ought to be a tax-supported provision. In the liberalisation of the justice system following the calamitous abolition of the death penalty, people with good intentions have plainly shown they are willing to sacrifice ever-increasing numbers of innocent lives to criminal whims for their high moral stances. Admirable though this idealism may be, it has caused inestimable downturns in levels of popular intelligence, hopeless health provision and ever-rising levels of crime.

Particularly relevant also is Hitchens' attack upon the denigration of a proud history. Liberals of the modern age have been quick to change the teaching of history in state-run schools, to propagate notions that what the British did in the past was wrong, or that cultural and social history such as how the peasants lived is more important. That is palpably not history, and an essential problem with all well-meaning liberals in Britain today, with their pro-Europe sentiments and socialist inclinations, is they have no sense of history. History is a cycle, and it repeats itself. Attempts to deny a culture, past or present, and to deny the greatness of what it achieved in favour of a lame modern day apologeticism is a recipe for disaster.

The above are simply a few of the arenas upon which Hitchens has decided to wax literal, but throughout on many separate topics his arguments are both coherent and potent. This is a remarkable book from a remarkable mind, and its points about the inherent dangers of the modern orthodoxy and its brutal refusal to accept points of view contrary to its own are exceedingly pertinent to Great Britain and the British people. Britain is a country whose culture has been effectively torn asunder, but not under the arm of foreign invaders or occupiers but paradoxically and almost incomprehensibly by its own natives. The same is true in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It's a terrible shame, and it is good that we have people such as Peter Hitchens to give voice to an opposition that has been too silent until now.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A just review is in order - Britain's own kulturkampf, February 18, 2001

By 

tpdinvilliers (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana (Hardcover)

As a historian I have often seen the argument made that the world of June 1914 was arguably a more peaceful, prosperous and gentle place than the present. Hitchens explains a great deal to lead us to answer George Orwell's question from 1984 - "I understand HOW, but not WHY.", and points out that Churchill's Britain had many virtues that are lost on members of my generation and even my parent's generation. Many other reviewers of this book have made their snippy little phrases about "Hitchens appealing to innate American right-wing attitudes", but I don't see his position as necessarily of the left or the right, though it is certainly idealogical. I think his indictment of modern British society would certainly apply to America as well, in that a generation that claimed to reject materialism in favor of a more spiritual approach has turned out to be less godly and more money grubbing than its parents ever were. I do not cling to the illusion that everyone of the "Greatest Generation" was a saint, but Hitchens is a breath of fresh air in countering the historical chauvinism of our times - that we, by virtue of our wealth and multicultural feminist beliefs are somehow morally superior to our ancestors who fought against Hitler and refused to apologize for evil Communist regimes around the world. Anyone enjoying the fruits of these triumphs of liberty ought to seriously examine Hitchens argument. It is a paean to all that was good about Britain, and suggests that patriotism in Britain (and indeed, Germany and the rest of Europe) should not left to drunken football hooligans.