Volume 2, Number 4 · April 2, 1964
Koestler's England
By E.J. Hobsbawm
Suicide of A Nation? An Inquiry into the State of Britain Today
edited by Arthur Koestler
Macmillan, 253 pp., $4.95
' 'State of England' pieces…are preoccupied with England, with decline and with crisis,' observes Henry Fairlie (who is against them) in the first essay of this curious book. He is right. Until the international decline of Britain became so evident that not even the highly developed national faculty for voluntary blindness could conceal it—around the time of Suez—literate Englishmen were remarkably incurious about their country, though occasionally venturing into explorations of the lives of the poor. They took it for granted. (For obvious reasons literate Scotsmen and Welshmen have behaved differently.) Since the middle 1950s we have begun to take the national pulse and make the national diagnosis with a zeal which may shortly bring us to within close distance of literate Americans. Social reporting (notably in the arts), amateur and professional sociological enquiries, realistic descriptions of how British institutions actually work, best-sellers called Anatomy of Britain, have multiplied. And so have think-pieces about Britain's crisis and Britain's future, of which the present book is an unfavorable specimen.
Review, 1295 words
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