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Description
'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read... Pitilessly brilliant' JONATHAN COE.
'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times.
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR.
'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative' David Miliband.
'Hugely entertaining and engrossing' Roddy Doyle.
'Best book about the English that I've read for ages' Billy Bragg.
A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism.
Trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact came to define the style of an entire political elite; a country that once had colonies redefined itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation.
Fintan O'Toole also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster. Now failure is no longer heroic – it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters.
A new afterword lays out the essential reforms that are urgently needed if England is to have a truly democratic future and stable relations with its nearest neighbours.
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Product details
| Published | 22 Nov 2018 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9781789541007 |
| Imprint | Apollo |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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[O'Toole] is a sharp thinker and he makes many good points... There is also a lot to learn from his incidental arguments. This is a literary book and I was delighted'
The Times
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The psychopathology of Brexit is at the heart of Fintan O'Toole's compact counterblast
Times Educational Supplement
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A witty attack on the fantasies that drove Brexit... Clever, over the top, but entertaining political writing'
The Times, Books of the Year
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Fintan O'Toole's searing polemic [is] expertly researched and full of unexpectedly funny vignettes
Sunday Business Post, Books of the Year
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What gives this book its distinction is the fact that [O'Toole] is as adept at analysing character (as revealed by language) as he is at marshalling statistics... O'Toole uncovers and dissects it with the deliberate, affectless skill of a virtuoso surgeon. The result, for me, is a wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read. In short, he has nailed us to the floor with a nine-inch nail. It's certainly not easy bein' English these days, and O'Toole, with this pitilessly brilliant book, has just made it at least fifty shades harder'
Jonathan Coe, Irish Times
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[The Euro] is what British conservative thought has feared since the 1970s. Readers interested in exploring these fears, and pretty much everyone else, should read [this]
Sunday Business Post

























