Volume 36, Number 18 · November 23, 1989
Is Britain 'Befouled'?
By M.F. Perutz
Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution
by Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 261 pp., $18.95
Here in Britain we are all criminals: guilty of conniving at a crime against humanity committed by a government that is polluting the Irish Sea, the British Isles, the entire globe with the radioactive discharges from its nuclear plants at Sellafield, a village in northwest England, on the Irish Sea. According to Marilynne Robinson, the author of the novel House-keeping and now of the book under review, 'The earth has been under nuclear attack [from Sellafield] for almost half a century.' This book is aflame with indignation at the diabolical practices of the British Atomic Energy Authority, at the irresponsibility of our National Radiological Protection Board, at the careless indifference of our venal members of Parliament and of the British public, at the American press for failing to warn unsuspecting tourists of the deadly dangers threatening their health if they set foot on these poisoned isles, and the American government for wasting its armed forces on their protection.
Review, 5937 words
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