Customer Reviews

Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the concluding volume of A. N. Wilson's trilogy of modern British history, preceded by The Victorians and After The Victorians. The book begins with the coronation of Elizabeth II and goes right on up to the bumbling ineptitude of Gordon Brown in 2008. It traces the rapid decline and fall of "Britishness" with one small, shining moment known as "Thatcherism." True, A. N. Wilson is an opinionated dunderhead whose writing turns to journalistic drivel more often than not. But I don't care because he's produced yet another thumping good read. The pages turn themselves, I swear.

Oh, and too bad no U.S. publisher has yet picked up this wonderful book. Maybe the head of the Nobel Prize committee on literature had a point about American insularity. Luckily, there's amazon.co.uk where I got my copy (and, oddly enough, the shipping seems to be faster than amazon.com).

I could hardly bear to put this book down. A.N. Wilson is unsurpassed in his ability to turn a fine phrase or craft a devious witticism, and here he provides a worthy successor to his The Victorians and After The Victorians. This volume begins with the accession of Elizabeth II in 1952, but it rarely mentions the monarch herself, concentrating instead on the multitudinous changes which have marked her reign, making Britain a much more prosperous place to live while causing the country to lose its special character or "Britishness." Wilson never seems quite able to define exactly what it is that the British have lost, anymore than anyone else can, but he does succeed in making the point that something that made Britain special is gone, and that the country, while richer and freer than it was in 1952, is the worse for the loss.

The book runs roughly chronologically through the Queen's six decades as Head of State. Wilson delights in bursting bubbles and serrating reputations, as when he labels Churchill's last years as PM a national embarrassment. He freely tosses around terms like "second rate" and "ineffectual", providing evidence with some barbed anecdotes that are wickedly fun to read. His chief target is the so-called "chattering classes", self-appointed elites who presumed they formed the Establishment in its various phases. Some of his heroes are a bit unexpected: he has kind words for Margaret Thatcher and the Prince of Wales. One of his most interesting chapters comes towards the end: "The Return of God," an examination of the interplay of faith and science.

Wilson ends his book with a chapter on the increasingly hapless Gordon Brown, which is particularly appropriate since it helps set the stage for the approaching General Election. I'm an American and an anglophile of many years standing. I found much in this book to be surprising and sometimes infuriating, but every word was entertaining and thought provoking.

A.N. WILSON'S short history of the United Kingdom during the reign of HM Queen Elizabeth II is lively and informative.
A distinguished Historian with several other more serious tomes published during a long career A.N.Wilson has taken on the relatively difficult task of a historical analysis on a period many of the readership will have lived through. Therefore, readers will know from experience or anecdotally something of many areas this book covers.
He manages to start his account of post-WW2 British Isles from the standpoint of J.R.Tolkein's epic English language fairy-tale, Lord of the Rings which was largely conceived in reaction to the enormous trials & tribulations brought about by the 2 great European conflicts (1914-18/1939-45)! However, from that slightly off-the-target beginning emerges an erudite and closely detailed checklist of all the main Britishness issues.
From 1950s Oxbridge 'Spy-ring' scandals through to Profumo-Keeler scandal and on to epic scandal of Thatcher's sycophant Tory Cabinet turning on the 'only man' in it ('Thatcher', as Dennis Skinner shouted out during her resignation Commons speech) and up to the much more recent scandal of Stephen Lawrence-Met Police 'institutionalised racism': Those topics of course being part of the introduction to the social-political background ethos of each decade.
A.N.Wilson's account of G.B. ascent/descent, depending on the reader's particular outlook, into the EUropean Union is covered in some depth: However, there is a lack of appreciation of the impact of this fundamental change on Britons and their cultural viewpoint. Unfortunately, as with so many books dealing with this area the narrative concentrates on the great political inferences and in the main misses the ordinary citizens' confusion & disquiet about 'ever closer union' with Continental EUrope.
You will enjoy reading this book for some confidently thrown quips, e.g. the Punk band, "Sex Pistols..saw the reign of QUEII as 'a fascist regime'. There was in fact much in common between the rhetoric of punk and the angry revolt, championed by Margaret Thatcher, of the suburbs against Conservative Politics."
Now there's a line I'm sure many of You didn't ever think to read... Thatcher's anarchic policies expressed in Punk-power!
It is worth reading if only for the diverting way the author manages to find such correlation between British society and the supposed leading lights of Great Britain.
Weaknesses: Scotland & Wales even with 'devolution' have only bit-parts. Northern Ireland fairs better in the pages devoted to its political passage, but of course, for all the worst reasons!
The summation is short on the one aspect that seems to be a serious weakness of not only A.N.Wilson but all analysis of post-WW2 G.B. - - whilst he correctly deduces that PM Gordon Brown has "sent Britannia packing" - - there is in this reviewer's opinion a complete lack of recognition and realisation that England and more especially the English have been marginalised over the course of the last 30 to 40 years by their own Westminster Parliament's persuit of a 'devolved' UK and the accompanying political courtship of the EUropean Union. Throughout the book A.N.Wilson fails to address the ramifications of the largest Union Nation's population being put-aside by their Political masters (and, Punk allusions not withstanding, he does not see the significance of Thatcher's appeal was to English feelings of social-cultural disconnection).
Another weakness: The 'Green revolution' barely enters the pages (Global Warming, p406) and yet has been 1 of the 3 pre-eminent international topics involving the UK for the last 4 decades -- surely every bit as important for Britons as 'War on Terror' and 'Retreat from Socialism' - - it is given scant regard under any heading.
As he gets nearer the present day unsurprisingly the narrative assessment weakens. PM Blair is seen as "Tony's Wars" which plainly does not correlate to his success as a British Politician winning 3 General Elections. It is a part of the book's general discomfort with finding the views of the British and in particular the English Electorate not conforming to what political intellectuals would have us believe is the reality: So, Tony's Wars are perceived as being incredibly unpopular, but Blair still won office in No.10! A.N.Wilson tries, e.g he repeats the story of Blair & Dubya Bush praying together at the Texas ranch and the implications of such behaviour, but never attempts a similar accounting of why the British Public still returned the man for a 3rd term with a majority of 62.
It is written entirely from a right-of-centre perspective, but to be fair is littered with aspersions against Conservative-Labour-NewLabour and the also-rans, i.e. ScotNat, PlaidCymru etc.: A thought-provoking book if only for the lack of sympathy and imagination about the People/Citizens that are at the core of its subject!

This is a rather puzzling book. Although it is highly entertaining and cleverly written, it is sometimes hard to see a clear thread running through the work. To the extent that one can be discerned, it is that Britain is simply not what it once was. Moreover, it is now just a relic and has been heading downwards through the whole period of "our times" i.e. during the second Elizabethan era.

A.N. Wilson's book begins with the latter days of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. He is now an old man whose mind has gone and his glory days just memories. It continues through the 1950s and its various scandals and failures. Think Profumo, think Suez. It moves on to the maudling Wilson period of the 1960s and the brief Prime Ministerships of Heath and Callaghan before considering Margaret Thatcher. In the "iron lady", we see someone prepared to take on her opponents without fear, but in the end, she is hated and replaced by the nice but dithering John Major. It concludes with Tony Blair and his wars before turning in finality to Gordon Brown, a man for whom the Prime Ministership was always a goal but, when he got there, he knew not what to do.

In spite of the book's agenda not always being clear, I found it to be a good read. It rumbles along at a good pace. It never tires the reader nor seems wanting for a strong opinion from time to time.

"Our Times" is the third part of a broader work of history by Wilson. The series covers the time from the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19 th century until the near of the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the 21 st century. In that time, Britain has moved from being a global superpower to that of a middling power arguably still in relative decline. If nothing else, this outcome should serve as a warning to all politicians who think their country's time in the sun will never end.

I think it worth reminding oneself before one opens the first page of this third book of Wilson's - idiosyncratic to the point of self-parody, here - historical trilogy of what he says in the first book, "The Victorians": to wit, that he can't imagine any more delightful time and circumstance to be born than in the 1840's as the son of a village curate. This imaginary past is Wilson's lost Arcadia and, frankly, he does a much better job of anecdotally narrating its history in "The Victorians", and the time immediately following in "After The Victorians." He is emphatically not a man of "Our Times" in spirit or in temperament, or so he would like the reader to believe, in any event. The truth is that he's more than a bit of a posing popinjay. In fact, he is quite aware of his démodé appeal, and is always anxious to show it to its best effect.

But the appeal falls flat in this book, or did for me, for the most part. One can only take so much of these daft anecdotal barbs parading as narrative history. Another reviewer is spot on in writing that Wilson is well-read, but not very intelligent. Quite. His interests in literature and art serve him well in the previous two books and were the saving grace for me whilst reading them. But, aside from Tolkien, whose deep-rooted pessimism, Wilson correctly points out, haunts The Lord of The Rings, there is no literature or art worth mentioning that emanates from Britain after WWII. In this, and only this, I tend to concur with him. Does anybody really think that Martin Amis or Ian McEwan bare comparison with Joseph Conrad or Thomas Hardy?

But the rest of the book just doesn't click with me. It's simply too full of contradictions and logical solecisms for me to enjoy all the barbs - some well-aimed, some not - at modern culture that constitute the bulk of the book, one might say its raison d'etre. Wilson's attempt at providing us with a theme consists of what is best termed the "Character vs. Determinism" trope. Wilson, needless to say, triumphs character over statistical methods and pedestrian concerns, but his notion of character is a very peculiar one. Despite his continual inveighing against determinism, he believes that what happens to one, one's "luck", is really no such thing but a part of one's character, like having bad teeth, to use Wilson's own dotty example, or, one might say, having a lethal brick fall off scaffolding onto your pate while crossing the street. It's all part of this thing called character, according to Wilson, and he treats the figures of "Our Times" and their mishaps accordingly. But, here's the rub: What could be more grindingly deterministic than this hidebound notion of "character"?!?

Wilson describes himself as a "Romantic Conservative" herein, which is apt. At least he knows what he's about. But, like re-viewing the 4 disk set of "Brideshead Revisited" for the fifth or sixth time, Wilson's work has become - in this volume - what he strives so much to prevent it from becoming: A crashing bore.

Wilson covers everything in this survey of Britain from 1953. And, while he does this, he does not always do so as thoroughly as a reader wishes. There are parts of the book that would have been well served by further examination or explanation. I have enjoyed, for instance, a greater discussion of the political leaders and their decisions (and constraints).

After reading the Victorians and After the Victorians (both very decent reads) by the author, I was disappointed in the sad lack of objectivity in Our Times. His devotion to Thatcher drips in page after page so that it seems that he paints such a pale portrait of all other prime ministers before and since as to brighten her image. He hates the Beatles poo-pooing their contribution to music and culture while venerating the Rolling Stones to a holier status. He comes out so biased that on subjects the reader knows little or nothing about, he loses that blind credibility that historians, treating the subject more objectively, enjoy. I gave it THREE STARS because it does provide an education on modern British history for Americans like me.

A.N. Wilson is not especially intelligent. And he is a hopeless historian. His views on how history teaching should be taught in schools is revealing:

'What is striking (about the Runnymede Trust's vision of a national past) is its negativity. Would... teachers have told children, as earlier generations were told, that Cromwell was the hero of modern republicanism, and the builder up of the British navy? Would they have been told that the Glorious Revolution saved Britain from becoming a Bourbon style monarchical dictatorship, shackled to an intolerant Roman Catholicism...'

So he goes on, depicting a vision of pedagogy that requires teacher to dictate a fixed (and highly prescribed) version of 'our Island story' to passively imbibing children.

Irrespective of whether this is a viable method of teaching nowadays, it is deeply insulting to both teacher and student. I am a history teacher, and firmly believe that the whole purpose of education is to encourage to think about the history they learn. To develop their critical faculties to they develop an understanding of how history really works: by unintended consequence, by debate, by accident, by unexpected change. Wilson would have us all become drones of a ministry of 'Island Story', repeating the same spiel ad nauseam about Britain's glorious past, thus his contriubtion to the history education debate becomes another tired salvo in the tedious ingratiating multiculturalists v safe traditionalists debate.

Our children deserve better.

But, as I said at the start, Wilson is not especially intelligent - his prose lacks the piercing, rigorously argued insight of more sophisticated non-fiction. And he is a pretty hopeless historian.

But enough of his flaws. On to his strengths. And there are many. Wilson is hugely well educated and, a rare thing amongst modern journalists in Britain, very well read (he is one of the few people alive nowdays to have read all of Walter Scott for instance). He is also a first rate gossip. This fascinating, sometimes funny, sometimes plain barmy history of modern Britain is something no academic historian could ever produce. Wilson produces a highly odd synthesis of cultural totems (such as the Lord of the Rings and Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials), with forgotten British society stories - such as Doris Day being introduced as 'Diana Clunt' by the flustered vicar of Swindon; and highly personal political analysis - he lambasts Roy Wilson as the hapless 'Woy' throughout, and has contempt for pretty much every political figure of 'Our Times', to produce a wonderful rant about modern life.

Not everyone would agree with Wilson's analysis - that a loss of Christian faith has led to a deep spiritual vacuum in modern life, where traditional values have been usurped by a multicultural hotch potch of mediocrity, murder (the Stephen Lawrence case comes in for interesting scrutiny) and junk food. He has old fashioned manners of speech - calling the poor 'lumpenproletariat', taking the term from Marx, for instance.

But he is not simply the old fashioned conservative who believes everything was better in the past either. He picks up on Harold MacMillan's hypocricies - opposing the Apartheid regime in South Africa, yet hardly countenancing the idea of blacks turning up on one of his shooting weekend. And he is happy to puncture the follies of free market right as well as socialist left.

In fact, hardly anyone assault in this scathing, at times ranting depiction of Britain in its post-Imperial decline years. It mixes high politics with tart gossip, thus making it far easier bedtime reading than many academic tomes of the period. And it is much better than Wilson's own journalism for the Daily Mail, in which he drones on about how single mothers should be steralised and the usual pap to fulfil the editorial requirements of the popular press.

The author takes an incredibly interesting subject - the rapid changes in Great Britain following WW II, and puts together a verbose, tedious and factually incorrect analysis of the era. Anyone knowledgeable about the post-war history of Great Britain will be appalled by Mr. Wilson's mistatements and inaccurate analysis. However, if you love name-dropping and pomposity, this is definitely a book for you. 450 pages. What a waste. Even the pictures are awful.