The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana by Peter Hitchens

The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana Reviews

• 
  Charles Haywood

  I did not like this book as much as I expected. In part that’s because, as an American, a narrative of British decline resonates with me less deeply, simply because much of the culture, politics and daily life of Britain is not familiar to me. In part it’s because the book is written in a somewhat didactic, overly episodic, fragmented fashion. But mostly, I think, it’s because I’m weary of conservative jeremiads that don’t offer any constructive recommendations on what to do. After all, as my mother used to tell me, “if there’s no solution, there’s no problem.” Conservatives who bemoan how bad things have gotten (and they have gotten very much worse in Britain since this book was written, 1999, or even since it was re-issued with a new Introduction, 2008) need to offer real alternatives and solutions, or they might as well not bother.
  
  In fairness, this was an early entry in a class of books that has only recently become common—the narrative and analysis of civilizational decline from a conservative perspective. Such books as Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option” and Charles Chaput’s “Strangers In A Strange Land” emphasize a Christian perspective; others, such as Yuval Levin’s “The Fractured Republic,” concern themselves with broader forms of decline. And those are the intellectually beefy books—there is an endless stew of sky-is-falling potboilers from popular author/entertainers like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh. Few authors, though, offer any form of concrete and realistic approach (again, there are exceptions, including Dreher and Levin—but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule).
  
  Ideally, what we need is authors who take as a given that most or all of Western civilization is damaged, destroyed, or zombified, and rather than narrating that set of problems, instead spend their time telling us what, specifically, is to be done. If I were writing a book (I’m not), I think the approach should be to analyze our society through historical comparison, through an explicit Toynbee-type “challenge and response” framework, realizing that this civilization is finished, but another civilization must necessarily follow it. This dialectic might, especially given modern wealth and technology, offer mechanisms to both seed a new civilization and to hasten the end of this one (for we might as well get on with it). Sure, it might be hundreds of years, as was true of all the civilizational turnings that Toynbee analyzed—but given the speed of modernity, maybe it can be compressed. And, after all, dying things should be killed quickly.
  But I should talk about the book. Peter Hitchens, a famous British journalist, recognizes that Britain (or, as many conservatives refer to it, “The Place Great Britain Used To Be”) is dead. He wrote pre-Brexit, of course, but Brexit will not save Britain. None of the many decrepitudes and horrors that Hitchens chronicles are tied to the European Union, although the book was inspired by the EU, since Hitchens wrote originally with the goal of stopping monetary union, which never happened. Unsurprisingly, Hitchens did not even contemplate the possibility of Britain leaving the EU (and says explicitly that “no democratic process” could ever lead to that result). Therefore, he focuses exclusively on what has changed in Britain for the worse, as a result of what the British have done, to themselves. It is not clear to me why Ross Douthat recommended this (quite obscure) book as one of the books to “read in the Age of Trump,” even less why Douthat said of this book in December 2016 that “you will not find a . . . . clearer explanation for why so many Britons voted for Brexit.” I don’t think it at all explains Brexit; if British voters thought like Hitchens, there would have been many earlier and more dramatic domestic votes than Brexit, and there have not been. Maybe it’s true that Britons voted for Brexit hoping that could help restore their society, but if so, that’s a false hope, since their problems are of their own making, or of the making of their ruling class, which is still very much in control.
  
  The book is arranged sub-topically, around the common theme, naturally. It is framed by the dramatic difference in English behavior and society in 1965, at the death of Churchill, and in 1999, at the death of Diana Windsor. Hitchens is very clear that there was nothing ideal about the England of the 1950s and early 1960s—it was poor, already on the downswing in confidence and verve, “rackety and disreputable.” But it was still recognizably England, with moral standards and a ruling class, across the political spectrum, that upheld those moral standards and the values that had made Britain great, and a great Empire. In subsequent chapters, Hitchens covers the destruction of education at all levels, which has both forgotten the past and turned education into a vehicle for vicious ideological indoctrination; the decline of community as shown by institutions and such less obvious things as building patterns of roads and towns; the theological and organizational decay of the established Church; the baleful effects of television on both children and adults, the latter as part of an organized program of undermining traditional values; degenerating sexual and quasi-sexual morals (such as views of bastardy); attacks by progressives and the state on the family at every level; the destruction of obscenity laws (led by Roy Jenkins, whom Hitchens repeatedly attacks) and the resulting degradation found on every corner and every newspaper; how AIDS and the diseases of smoking, each caused by specific identifiable and correctable behaviors, receive totally different treatment from the establishment (this chapter was apparently omitted from the 1999 edition as “too controversial”); and how the British have lost their love of liberty and “taken a chainsaw” to their ancient constitution (including as a result of perceived security threats). Each chapter gives solid statistical/analytical, as well as anecdotal, evidence in support of the author’s claims, and each chapter is well-written, if in an acerbic, somewhat hyperbolic manner.
  
  Throughout, Hitchens gives many interesting insights. For example, he repeatedly notes the “extraordinarily subversive power of comedy,” to which a democratic government that is the target has no adequate response, even when (as is the norm) the “comedy” is wholly mendacious. I think this is true, but only up to a point, and perhaps much less true in today’s fragmented media era, where people consume the news, or comedy, they select, rather than being a captive audience to one of a handful of BBC channels. For example, I am constantly breathlessly informed by the entire news media, every Sunday, how savagely and successfully Saturday Night Live skewered Donald Trump the night before. (Treating the show as “news” allows the media to wholly drop the already-long-gone pretense of objectivity and to broaden its desired political impact, since few people actually watch SNL.) But does anyone think that this is anything but preaching to the choir? Is there a single person on the planet who watches SNL and has his mind changed about Donald Trump in the slightest way? I doubt it. Mostly such “comedy” harms its viewers, because it makes them more insular and even more unable to understand how Trump became President—which is why Trump became President.
  
  Hitchens also does a good job of reminding us that much of what passes for known history is false. For example, at mid-century the slogan of the South African Communist Party was “Workers of the World United for a White South Africa!,” though now you would think that the white Left was always opposed to apartheid, rather than active participants. And more relevantly to his core thesis, Hitchens notes that most Britons were disgusted or appalled by the spectacle surrounding Diana Windsor’s death, although the saturation media coverage and Tony Blair’s use of soppy (and unjustified) emotion gave the opposite impression, making the majority who didn’t care or thought little of Diana feel isolated and in the minority.
  
  Reading the book has its moments of bitter humor, when the reader realizes that its biggest flaw is that we have long since left behind the mostly comparatively mild examples that Hitchens gives. His “bad new days” are now, largely, the “good old days,” or at least the “not so bad old days.” For example, Hitchens complains of bad language and sexual content on the BBC—as of 1999. Today I read an article on the BBC website, castigating as “prudish” and stupid those (supposedly few) viewers who have dared to raise their voices against a current TV series, “Versailles,” which among things features explicit gay orgies, along with plenty of pornographic normal sex. Similarly, if you had described the Rotherham scandal (where the authorities actively and aggressively covered up the organized rape of hundreds of young girls over decades by Muslim men because they thought doing otherwise might get them accused of racism, with the authorities never punished in any way, and light sentences given to a handful of the hundreds of rapists), I doubt if Hitchens would have believed things could ever happen. But things can always get worse, and will always get worse, until one day, it stops.
  
  Such a society cannot be saved. Not solely because people are presented programming like “Versailles,” for most viewers will simply ignore gay orgies, retching slightly, but knowing they are not allowed to say anything, and exposure to explicit sex in entertainment is mostly a symptom of erosion of moral fiber, rather than a cause. And not solely because crimes that in the past would have led to justified vigilante justice are instead ignored. But because the cumulative effect of the different types of decay Hitchens shows, together with the subsequent slide even further, demonstrates the irretrievability of moral virtue, and, even more importantly demonstrate that the ruling class is rotten. Such decline is not retrievable.
  
  Hitchens makes quite a few statements and arguments that to an American may not seem “conservative.” For example, he repeatedly criticizes Margaret Thatcher, a saint to most American conservatives, for not really being conservative. “When the Thatcher government brought [endless strikes] to an end, it introduced a new type of destabilization, as its policies wiped out millions of traditional jobs. Mrs. Thatcher’s carelessness with traditions and institutions looked like necessary radicalism. But it helped to weaken the foundations of everything that had seemed permanent before.” “The apparent rebirth of Conservatism in 1979 was a false dawn because the Thatcherite movement was not interested in morals or culture. It believed mainly in the cleansing power of the market, which has much to be said for it but which has no answers to many fundamental questions—and which cannot operate properly unless honesty and stability are enforced through both ethics and law.” He also ignores issues critical to American conservatives, such as the right to armed self-defense, and really doesn’t talk about crime nearly at all (surprising, given its huge increase in Britain over the past few decades). In fact, in a mild manner, Hitchens attacks Americans for being part of the ruination of Britain, as cultural values that work in the very different country of America were imported to Britain, where they don’t work, by actual Americans during World War Two and by cultural and media imports thereafter.
  
  “The Abolition of Britain” is a lament, and it has value as a historical analysis and exegesis. But the time for laments is over. It is a time for choosing (to coin a phrase). Will we identify courses of action and take them? Will they be courses of aggressive action? Or will they be courses of inaction, either because action is pointless or because passive defense is more effective? The old world is gone; we did not really need Hitchens to tell us that, but he has done a good job doing so. The current world is an abomination, still, for a time, given shape by a decayed and collapsing moral framework and able to continue apparent forward movement through its unprecedented wealth, which it is nonetheless consuming faster than it is replacing. The new world is aborning; we, or our children, or our children’s children, will help to mold it. Books like this may serve some function to them, but the new world is its own thing, not a copy of the old—which limits the value of laments.
• 
  Steven

  This was a very informative piece of "Social Criticism." The book is well-written and an interesting, fast-paced read. Hitchens makes a thorough review of English history during the latter-half of the 20th century and examines changes along the way that he argues have turned England into another nation altogether.
  
  As an American, I was most interested in his description of the England that WAS. The England of today, however, is compelling as well, being a likely portrait of the America of tomorrow. Hitchens provides excellent analysis of the steps that moved England to give up so many liberties, to destroy solid institutions like its churches and schools, and to weaken others irreparably, to grant over-reaching powers to Tony Blair and the Labour Party, powers that have now limited forever the liberties of the English people--regardless of the party in charge.
  
  There is a bit of the Jeremiad here, but the book is well-written, compelling, even hard to put down. It is more neutral than negative, and the arguments Hitchens presents are interesting and certainly merit careful consideration.
  
  I recommend this book for conservatives of every stripe and anyone concerned about the future of Western nations--or curious about the fading greatness of Britain's past.
• 
  Rachel

  Hitchens has the pulse on Modern Britain. From the change of England's governance to the adoption of Estuary English, from the sharp decline of education to the downfall of the Christian family and the demise of morality, Peter doesn't spare any arrows.
  "Abolition" attacks the ruined nation Britain has become and pinpoints the reasons for its doom. Peter has an uncanny understanding of Historic Britain: the empire with a legendary Christian past. He educates and warns those who desire to understand why Britain has fallen so far from its roots. Be prepared for his harsh analysis of what was once a great nation.
  As a disclaimer, this is an honest and frank account of issues the UK currently faces. Because of that, Peter tackles subjects such as divorce, homosexuality, abortion, eugenics and moral demise in a blunt and open manner. I only recommend this book for adults.
• 
  Max Berendsen

  Though written over two decades ago, The Abolition of Britain still hits the nail on the head with regard to what impact neoliberal policies of the past few decades have had on the traditional culture of the United Kingdom (and other countries).
  
  Peter Hitchens explains these changes to the reader through the use of cultural phenomena of which the reader at first glance would not know that their impact was that great, such as colour television and satirical programming to the urbanization of the Oxfordshire countryside.
  
  Though encountering a number of disagreements with Hitchens while reading this book and feeling (as a 23 year old) that there was a bit of a generational gap between us, I would still without a doubt recommend The Abolition of Britain to anyone who wishes to understand the existential crisis which the UK and other (Western) countries have been (and are still) going through for the past half century.
• 
  Bakunin

  Couldn't be bothered to finish it. This is more of a conservative rant about the decline of Britain. Unfortunately Hitchens fails to provide a more philosophical framework and explain his conservative principles clearly. The book therefore becomes more of an article that has been elongated in order to be published.
  
  I was annoyed at the fact that everything he describes in the book had occurred in all other European countries with large welfare states. There is indeed little that is specifically British about it. If one wants to learn and understand English culture one should instead read Roger Scrutons book on England.
• 
  Karen L.

  Well, My husband was reading this and it looked so interesting that I read it. Towards the end I ended up skimming or speed reading it because of the pending due date and my growing library fines. I really liked it. I kept wanting to go pentecostal and shout ,"Amen," after much of it. I don't have the book on hand to quote Hitchens, which I would like to do. However I do remember what struck me.I was intrigued by his contrast of the somber funeral of Winston Churchill as opposed to the very emotional and somewhat dramatic funeral/ grief atmosphere of the public mourning of Princess Diana. Amen Peter, Amen.
  
  Hitchens brought up some very good points of what we may see as small changes that were really very large changes that transformed the British culture for the worse. Some examples were central heating taking the family away from the common hearth, television,modernizing the language and the lessening of the academic emphasis, of knowing the good classics of literature etc, etc... The changes that have happened over the past few decades in England have raped the land of the culture we all so loved. There is hardly a trace of dear old England left. It is a very sad book. Peter Hitchens is a voice we need to hear more loudly and more often!
• 
  James

  Before you can even begin to argue about what's good about change and what's not, it's first worth elucidating what has actually changed. For that you need someone properly conservative, not a 'conservative-leaning' person who's absorbed the central assumptions of liberal society yet differs on superficial aspects. Those types are incapable of seeing the changes, let alone commenting on them in a non-banal way.
  
  Peter Hitchens is properly conservative. He's not messing about - he laments the adoption of the metric system, whose questioning wouldn't even occur to most official 'conservatives' in Britain today. For all the things you might disagree with Hitchens on, you're glad that he is a puritanical curmudgeon. What other kind of person would have the drive to simply point out societal change r.e. the death penalty abolishment's effect on our understanding of human nature, the effect of television on family and community life, how at the foundation, culture has been flipped upside down, and the prevailing economic debates are red herrings?
  
  You don't need to agree with him on anything to see value in such a book. I'm glad to have so many unquestioned assumptions pricked and poked.
• 
  Katie

  I agreed with much of the book, but found it to be quite a bleak read. Hitchens is right about the changes in society’s values, but he merely dismisses all progress as idiotic without explaining why this might be the case, nor does he explain why he thinks things were better before. He simply states that things are worse now than they were before without offering any argument whatsoever.
  
  He does a good job of tracking some interesting social changes (Eg the rise of soap operas and people maniacally pleading for the release of fictional Coronation Street character Deirdre Rachid (both an amusing and nostalgic chapter)) but he doesn’t do enough to win his audience over, which I think is a great shame.
  
  I did disagree with a few of his points- eg his criticisms of female contraception and single motherhood, and the MAD chapter on capital punishment. I think his nostalgia for the past and utter dismissal of the present blind him to solutions. He isn’t thinking about what would actually be GOOD for society. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that the past was good and the present is bad. It’s more complex than that, but Hitchens isn’t prepared to get into it. He seems jaded and hateful of the modern world.
  
  I think his explanation of the demise of values such as duty, community, family is important, which is why it is a shame that this book is so unconvincing. He does this important argument no favours; I doubt that many sceptics would come away from this book thinking that progressive values are damaging. They would simply think Hitchens is a trad who misses the good old days, and to an extent, they would be right!
  
  That said, if you think you might disagree with him, it’s worth reading just to push yourself far out of your comfort zone.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Georgia Leatherdale Gilholy

  A damning analysis of a no longer existent thing: Britain.
• 
  Theo

  I suppose if Peter has taught me anything, and mind you he has uncovered a fair amount concerning these wonderful British isles that I was thus far happily unaware of, is that there really is a need in this country for true opposition between political parties. The tepid nature of both Labour and Conservative parties, especially at the time of writing this, seem to both champion the same basic lukewarm, myopic, disunited schema of culture (of course one must bear in mind that beneath the callous veneer, which the Tories do ever so enjoy brazenly displaying as some powerful spectacle, so much of what they espouse concerning immigration seems to me to be just thin-skinned rhetoric, serving up largely impractical proposals which merely pander to their home base - just look at Rwanda). As much as I mourn the lost future of Corbyn’s true to form socialist vision of the Labour Party (roll on Mick Lynch) I also have a deep empathy for true card carrying Conservatives (like Hitchens here) who go unrepresented by the embarrassingly shameless MP’s who currently constitute the Conservative party. Peter’s a real thorn in the side for someone like me: but you really do have to admire his barnacle-like tenacity, suctioned on to the sinking ship of this country with his frequent accurate assessments (much to my ideological chagrin) that you can’t help but end up respecting him — even if I disagree with a fair number of his positions.
• 
  JMJ

  I wanted to read this book to challenge my own thinking and being aware of one or two newspaper articles in which the Peter Hitchens argues cogently, I thought I had made a good choice in The Abolition of Britain.
  
  Sadly, I was very wrong.
  
  This extended essay, which against all logic manages to sprawl out over 300+ pages, is ostensibly Hitchens’ whinge de coeur that nothing in Britain is really as good as it is in his memory.
  
  Page after tortuous page Hitchens revels in his snowflake-like victimhood, being offended (for himself and on behalf of absolutely everyone else apparently) at almost everything that doesn’t align with his rose-tinted view of Britain in 1965. He hates that they got rid of the textbooks he had at school, that people are not required to be absolutely miserable at funerals and more to the point, that life is simply not like it used to be when he was a lad (he spends the entirety of the first chapter explaining this through an overly-elaborate metaphor).
  
  If that weren’t enough, he interleaves this with some rather strange views of the past, allowing rather clearly to see what values Hitchens’ holds dear - namely an overwhelming fear of God, a desperate love of the monarchy and a resolute determination to cling for comfort to the things he is used to. His fetishisation of authority sounds at times like a poorly-written teenage adventure novel, referring at one point to “the British middle military classes, those hard, knowing, humourous men with faces like teak and voices like fine sandpaper, and memories of adventure, violence and heat”. It is made evident throughout that Hitchens loves authority and longs for the feeling of safety it gives him, yet I did not expect it to border on Mills & Boon storyline...
  
  Most surprisingly, I was shocked by a distinct lack of any factual data, shown by an incredibly select (and brief) bibliography in which he often picks incredibly obscure educational pamphlets or quotations from rather old periodals on marriage as his examples of evidence. I appreciate that these are not academic essays and he does not need necessarily back up his views on changing urban geography with data (although it would be helpful) but I at least expected relevant, objective points that could at least be adapted to his argument. This book contained no examples of this (yet we frequently see this in Christopher Hitchens’ writings) and so it simply became a long-winded tirade of things that irk Peter Hitchens.
  
  All in all, you get the sense that Hitchens is blissfully unaware of the hypocrisy or irony of his own writing. He talks about the dangers of television and computers, soon to cause the breakdown of British civilisation as we know it, without seeming to be aware that these were exactly the same arguments that were made when newspapers were introduced, or when dresses began to show ankle! His overall argument, that the Leftists and Liberals and Marxists in Britain have brought about its downfall somehow, very neatly sidestep the fact that since 1965 the Tories have spent more time in power than Labour.
  
  Ultimately, despite a tendency myself to resist change and towards sentimentality, it was difficult not to pity the Hitchens after reading as he desperately tries to swim against the current in a world it seems he very much does not understand.
• 
  Terence

  This is a totally mad book, but worth reading for all that. Hitchens has such a nostalgic view of the past that he thinks everything from sweets to the death penalty were better in the old days, which for him starts around 1965. Nonetheless, he does make you think. I still find that I disagree with him about the death penalty. He believes that jurors, judges and politicians are compelled to take things more seriously when they are faced with the life-or-death decision of the death penalty; but by his own admission this was not true in a number of important cases, including that of Derek Bentley, whose death sentence was upheld essentially to "encourage the others". The fact that Hitchens accepts this (the political use of the execution of Bentley) is proof that the death penalty was, and would again be, used in a political manner, rather than in the sober, ethical manner he wishes. I believe that Britain is a more moral country for its brave decision to incarcerate such infamous killers as the Moors Murderers for life rather than to execute them. It is far better that it does this than to risk killing the innocent, as it did in that other notorious 50s case, the execution of Timothy Evans.
• 
  William

  Peter Hitchens, brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, wrote this work on what he saw as the decline of British culture. Hitchens considers the great issue of our times is not so much the political and economic changes as it is the loss of what it means to be "British." Hitchens attributes this decline to the usual suspects: decline of religion and morality, loss of British historical knowledge, mostly attributed to the banal education foisted upon the people by elites. Surprisingly for a conservative, he's not all smiles toward Thatcherism and his voice toward working class socialists is fairly sympathetic (although there's no love lost for the menace, Roy Jenkins). Hitchens' tone toward Britain's problems appears very unhopeful, yet in the end he does appeal to both conservatives and socialists to join together to rescue the British nation-state from absorption into the "United States of Europe" so that they will maintain the freedom to choose their national destiny. A fine read. I highly recommend it if you are interested in a brief overview of British cultural decline in the 20th century.
• 
  John

  This is a book geared more toward Britons, but very relevant for the American reader. Hitchens is concerned with the cultural decay in Britain, and which is well underway in America, and its consequences on British sovereignty and the moral state of its people.
  
  The book is full of wisdom and tradition though I'm inclined to think that Hitchens is too soft on Britain's role in WWI & WWII, which leads to several seemingly wrong conclusions. But otherwise an excellent book.
• 
  Bracey

  The Abolition of Britain is one sobering book that details a no holds barred assessment regarding the consistent cultural erosion of England from within. Peter Hitchens explains why the British society has been broken, why it might never recover and who was responsible for the demise. The author surveys the period between deaths of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana but you can see, by various measures, the ills he diagnoses are still ailing Britain to this day. Every cultural sickness you think we as Americans are suffering has in many regards happened in England and in this regard, though Hitchens hinges his work on Britain, he is dealing with the whole of the Western world - and even beyond.
  
  Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept was an apt title to describe what has happened to the Old Continent over the past 50 or so years and it should not be overlooked. But the devastation that has been waged while Great Britain has slept is truly sad. Some authors have covered and focused on the Islamization of England but Hitchens covers the widespread changes in British society from its social norms, to the Church of England, and all the way British civil law. While the author doesn’t say it, the people of England are in the midst of a culture war. Britain's traditions, culture and cherished national institutions are being demonized and eroded from within by the British and Left through the loose employment of cultural Marxism. If it sounds oddly familiar to a phenomena occurring here within the US, it’s because it is so.
  
  Further, the elite of Britain, with its blind embrace of multiculturalism, have spiraled the nation into something that everyday Britons have come to despise. England has been browbeaten into an imperial guilt complex where its cherished cultural contribution to the world is constantly ridiculed as racist and jingoistic. Even Shakespeare is under attack which Hitchens details in a great chapter titled, ‘The Queens English.’ He also chronicles the attack on traditional morality and Christendom by liberal relativists in the excellent chapter, ‘Is Britain Civilized?’ There is perhaps no better descriptor of how the soul of Britain has been transformed than when Hitchens says, ‘The abolitionists’ ideas were rooted in a post-Christian humanism which sought to perfect life on earth, rather than govern a community of miserable sinners.’ Needless to say, this was an eye opening and thought provoking book – read it!
  
• 
  Colin

  Peter Hitchens has a sort of reputation as the not-as-good Hitchens brother, but really he's just the Hitchens you're less likely to agree with. And can anyone be surprised that they have such different opinions? Agter all, they're both so contrarian it was inevitable that one would end up being a raging leftie and the other as conservative AF. Christopher was always the former of course, despite his later support for the Iraq war. Peter is the latter. But he's proper conservative, not what people mean when they say it today. Not a frothing right-wing ideologue in the Trump mould or a.... whatever the hell the modern british conservative party is; he doesn't even spare Margaret Thatcher the rough edge of his tongue. No, he's out here defending britishness, old-school values and all he sees as good in the national character. It's a great read because like any book authored by a Hitchens you know he's going to come at it from an interesting angle and make some good points and make you think about thnings in a new way.
  Ubnfortunately, the target of his ire is a bit too broad. He seems to be against all change. So, while he (rightly) lays into the mawkish american sentimentality that has crept into our public life, the lack of confidence in ourselves, the death of the quiet pub and the undermining of personal autonomy, he seems also to regard sexual freedom as being suspect and to want to return to an era of shame and prudery, which I don't really understand. Not all social change is bad social change, and nor is the distinctive britishness you imagine a permanent state of affairs. It was changing before you were born.
  It's also notable how his prophecies about europe echo today. On the one hand, he is pessimistic about the EU and seems to hold many of the ideas that were successfully harnessed, years later, by Leave.EU, but on the other he worries about the corrosive effect of enti-establishment satire and iconoclasm which, he thinks, could be used by a demagogue to harness the public's contempt for "elites" (yes, he uses the phrase "liberal elite" long before it became a popular cue for booing and hissing) to subvert democracy. Fast forward to 2016, and the latter has happened in the service of preventing the former. I should really read his recent stuff and see what he makes of this situation we're in now.
  I listened to this audiobook because I had a 10k race and I find audiobooks I disagree with energise me. At least, that's the theory, and it seems to have worked. I managed it in under an hours, which is not bad for an old fart.
• 
  Reza Amiri Praramadhan

  The author argues that Britain is abolished. It underwent a process, a cultural revolution, which started with the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, the true embodiment of Great Britain, and completely finished also with the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, the “People’s Princess”. Throughout the revolution the values such as family, tradition, law and order, patriotism and authority were so wrecked by the intrusion of Americanism, casual views on drug use, violence and pornography, assault on family, and other disruptive elements so favoured by the lefts. Even Margaret Thatcher did nothing to stop this revolution, which culminated in Tony Blair’s victory, espousing values that would be frowned before. Overall I agree with what the Author said, except his view on smoking.
• 
  Øyvind

  This review has been a long time coming, and so had the reading of the book itself (after listening to Peter Hitchens talk about these issues for several years). I read the 2018 version, subtitled From Winston Churchill to Theresa May. I wish Hitchens had waited until he could add Boris Johnson instead, for reasons I will come back to.
  
  It is a wide-ranging book, covering subjects such as: Britain's cultural revolution from Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965 to Princess Diana's funeral in 1997 (Introduction and Chapter 1); the loss of memory and historical knowledge (Chapter 2); the deterioration of standards in education (Chapter 3); the dismantling of the British Empire and the rise of modernist architecture (Chapter 4); the liberalisation of the Church of England (Chapter 5); the passivity brought on by constant television consumption (Chapter 6); the degradation of comedy to satire and mockery (Chapter 7); the undermining of marriage and the increase of unwed mothers (Chapter 8); the deterioration of language and literature (Chapter 9); the total revolution in sexual morality (Chapter 10); the spread of indecendy in books, films, and TV (Chapter 11); the bad influence of soap operas on public morals (Chapter 12); the society-changing effects of the contraceptive pill (Chapter 13); the very controversial comparison of the AIDS epidemic to the health risks of smoking (Chapter 14); the identification of Roy Jenkins as an architect of Britain's cultural revolution (Chapter 15); the weakening of British culture and patriotism since the Second World War (Chapter 16).
  
  I had originally planned to write a few sentences about each topic, but that review would have been too long both for me to write and for anyone to read. Hitchens writes about all these in a dense way that makes you think, and which could take some time to fully digest - whether you agree with him about most things or not.
  
  That the book gets better with time has been shown, I think, by the fact that new editions of it have been coming out since it was originally published in 1999. The points made in it are still relevant, and some of them seem to be increasingly so - as the developments lamented by Hitchen are accelerating or, we might say, reaching their completion.
  
  Now, time for some criticism.
  
  Hitchens' antipathy towards the EU and the project of so-called European integration is evident throughout the book. He writes that Britons 'voted for the breakup of the United Kingdom' (with devolution) in 1997, and were 'about to be persuaded to accept the incorporation of the remains into some sort of European federal state' (p. 23). And now 'Britain is, or soon will be, somewhere else: George Orwell's Airstrip One, or a series of regions in the European Federal State' (p. 317).
  
  Sometimes, this antipathy comes across as being directed towards continental Europe itself and not just the EU. Hitchens seems almost proud that his father 'travelled widely in South America, visited ... Murmansk and Archangel, lived in Ceylon, Malta and the now-forgotten Chinese treaty port of Wei Hai Wei' but 'rarely set foot upon the European continent' (pp. 103-104). He celebrates the fact that the Anglican Church 'was at the heart of England's ... separation from the Roman Catholic, supranational Continent' (p. 129). And so forth.
  
  In the new afterword, Hitchens mentions mass immigration and multiculturalism as the 'explanation of the EU referendum vote' in 2016 (p. 340). That might be so. But the effect of the current Prime Minister Boris Johnson's version of Brexit (recall that he was elected in 2019 to 'get Brexit done') may be the sad furthering of Britain's breakup. If Hitchens thought devolution was bad, he should really be worried about Scottish independence and Irish unification - the prospects of which have grown as a result of Brexit.
  
  With Johnson's ambition of 'Global Britain' failing, the United Kingdom is seen by many as no longer a serious country. Besides, I do not think most of those who voted in the 2016 referendum did so because they wanted more immigration from Asia to replace their neighbours from across the channel. Sadly, Johnson might end up being remembered as the one who presided over his country's final abolition - unless its people are able to change course.
  
  If they do, they will still have to contend with all the other problems outlined by Hitchens in 16 chapters - most of which, it should be remembered, are also faced by countries in continental Europe. I do not think changes in political or economic organisation (within or outside of the EU) can be the real solution to any of them. The solution must be pre-political, cultural and philosophical.
• 
  Mwansa

  Absolutely Brilliant! I stumbled across Peter Hitchens only recently and it has been one of my best discoveries this year. He is a very clear communicator and he argues his points very well. In the Abolition of Britain he shows the decline of Britain and how it began with subtle changes over the last 60 or so years. The argument is not only compelling, it is also something you can see on the ground. Three things that stood out for me are..
  
  The inferiority complex of nations. There is a form of self derision that is present all around the world as countries view themselves as lesser than others. Hitchens makes the argument that Britain fell into this mould. What once was a country that was vibrant and proud of what it was and what it stood for it has now turned into a country that has a staggering inferiority complex. There has to be a sense of national pride for a country to grow and thrive, you can see this in America (though it is shifting rapidly there as well), Russia and China. Sometimes this belief in your nation has to have an element of delusion to it but it has to be there otherwise you will be taken.
  
  A failing education system. Education should be for all but the standard of education should not be lowered so that all can be comfortable. There has to be an objective standard of good education and there has to be a fixed line on what good grammar, arithmetic, literature, arts and the sciences are. Hitchens shows that there has been a sudden shift in the education system that has fed of the loss of national identity that has made a strict adherence to the English language irrelevant. It has given up the more rigorous elements of the education system in favour of inclusivity and has literally changed the nature of the teaching of history so that the nature of education itself has changed. I can see this in my home country too and this must be fought.
  
  The demise of the family. This is another thing that has brought stronger nations to their knees even though they are still stumbling along pretending to have not fallen. The government has come into the home and weakened the institution of marriage both in terms of the bond between husband and wife but also between parents and children and society has clearly crumpled as a result of it.
  
  The world is changing all around and we must be cautious and careful to analyse the change rather than hoping onto every new trend because these things come with dire consequences and our children will end up paying for the reluctance on our part to think and maybe we too will be writing of the abolition of our nations if we have not began to do so already
• 
  Delmar Terblanche

  A very good cultural history which I recommend anyone who's interested in critiques of the soullessness of contemporary capitalism, cultural decay, or post Imperial Britain read.
  
  Two quibbles - one, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that Hitchens' vaguely paleoconservative reactionism leads to passages which are indelicate to modern sensibilities. It's a book which is antifeminist, vaguely homophobic, and definitely transphobic. None of these things are major occupations of the book, but they're there, and if you don't know who Hitchens is they might surprise you (I struggle to imagine such a reader but I think I ought to entertain the hypothetical). Read at your own risk. For my part, I thought the comprehensiveness of the cultural history (and certain very salient critiques of cultural commodification - especially stuff on the changes within the education system) were insightful enough that I, so to speak, closed my eyes and thought of England during the muckier passages.
  
  Quibble two is more serious, as it concerns his methodology. More than once Hitchens dismisses the statistics and research of those he disagrees with as spurious or dubious, but refuses to elaborate. Perhaps such an elaboration exists in some appendix, and perhaps it entirely justifies his view that, for instance, domestic abuse in married households was not a widespread problem in the 19th century. But he fails to provide it in here. And he fails, on this account, repeatedly. This is bad enough, but he also cites other similar studies and statistical swamplands with impunity, making no effort to differentiate between the two sources. It's a slight warning bell, but it rings loudly, and has me, by implication, questioning a lot in here.
  
  I think a lot of people are gripped by a firm realisation that there is something profoundly wrong with the modern world. Marxist alienation abounds, and our techno-lives are totally soulless. Hitchens first grappled with this over two decades ago, and his insights remain valuable. But like many cultural and political theorists, I suspect his strength is more as a diagnostician than as a surgeon. I can't imagine I'll volunteer to go under his knife anytime soon - but the view from the operating theatre remains intriguing. And my, he sure is an artist with that scalpel.
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  Vidur Kapur

  Hitchens writes well, and does a good job of documenting some of the profound social and cultural changes that have occurred in Britain since the end of the Second World War. He fails to establish that these changes have been bad. I imagine that the book is in some ways quite demoralising for conservatives who read it, for the message is essentially "Roy Jenkins and his 'civilized society' won, and there's nothing we can do about it now".
• 
  Ashley Hall

  4/5*
  
  A very interesting and well written read.
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  Michael Tutty

  Outdated in '99 when it was published and has only become more outdated since.
  The vulgar Hitchens brother for sure
• 
  Des Pemberton

  Published originally in 1999 and supposedly demonstrates how Britain and its society have changed from 1965 (when Winston Churchill was buried) and 1997 (when Dianne Spencer was buried). Basically, us Brits are doomed. However, if you compare 1935 society with 1965; 1905 to 1935 et al, then I think vast changes would in each comparison be noted. But what also will be noted will be the acceleration of these changes, as technology, science and a more liberal outlook by society come into play.
  I left school in 1965, so witnessed most of the events described in this book. We are where we are; mistakes have probably been made and a lot of decisions made by politicians have more to do with political party shenanigans, but that's been going on for centuries.
  Is it worth a read? No, it's out of date. I suggest you wait for Peter Hitchens to produce a book comparing the period 1997 (Diane) and 202? (Diane's gracious former mother-in-law). In that period, we had (and are still having) some significant events, a lot of them could have been either avoidable or better managed.
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  Josep Marti

  One has to have experienced the European decline in order to appreciate the prophetic voice of this book. It charges fiercely against everything that liberalism —and I mean enlightened liberalism, not a left-right dichotomy— holds dear. Analyzing culture, education, religion, single mothers, Americans... Peter Hitchens makes sure that no one is left untouched by the end of the book. Worry not about the publishing date— it’s just as relevant as it was when it came out... perhaps even more so! It does assume a lot of knowledge about British society and history, but it’s very rewarding and could be a good introduction for Americans and other Europeans to British history.
  
  The only bad thing is that the dire picture it portrays of the future has been fulfilled word by word. If one is to be guided by Hitchens alone, conservatism, proper conservatism rooted in tradition and the past, is as dead as the society we mourn.
• 
  Duncan McAlister

  Contains difficult questions for liberals and modern conservatives alike
  
  Despite the subtitle ‘From Lady Chatterly to Tony Blair’, the chronology of the changes to British life in this book date back to the interwar years and beyond. There is a detailed account of changes to the Anglican Church, education system, laws and landscape. Chapter one starts with a beautifully vivid description of 1960s London - sights, sounds and smells - placing you there, far better than watching any film, Hitchens demonstrating his own point that books are far better for the imagination than television. In what would be almost unthinkable in a post-00s conservative ‘national decline’ tome, immigration barely gets a mention - in fact there is a far longer account of the settlement of American servicemen in WW2 than anything on Commonwealth or European immigration. The idea that American culture has had greater impact on Britain’s way of life than immigration from elsewhere would no doubt make many ’00s conservatives in the Farage/Rees-Mogg vein uncomfortable.
  
  This is a book that very much looks inward to explain Britain’s changes. The author cites changes in the Anglican liturgy, relaxation of divorce laws, comprehensive schooling, suburbanisation and the television age as seminal moments in Britain’s decline. Some of the author’s arguments in 1999 seem positively innocent now - the era where 20 million people would watch a soap opera or comedy and talk about it at school or work the next day, where what we watched was still controlled by 3-4 broadcasters, heavily regulated by the State, seems halcyon compared to the current fragmented Internet culture where any manner of dark worlds are available at the mere tap of a screen. The current Conservative PM, soon to be twice divorced, living ‘in sin’ with a woman 20 years his junior, barely even registers as a talking point among conservatives or liberals.
  
  Nonetheless, some of Hitchens’ predictions seem overly pessimistic on his own terms. We have not yet reached the Fall of Rome. Indeed, the proliferation of Internet pornography seems to have taken sex back into the private sphere to some extent. Apart from the stupid ‘Naked Attraction’ programme, there is very little nudity on network television, particularly in a dramatic context, far less so than the 1990s. Indeed, the #MeToo era has arguably brought about a new prudishness, especially in the way men are expected to act towards women.
  
  We did not join the Euro, and the Union (that of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is still standing - just! - though ironically more under threat from the Brexit Hitchens so desired than anything that has come before. Though there is much discussion of Northern Ireland and the Troubles, there is very little attempt to understand Scotland’s different place in the Union, having had different education, religious and legal systems since 1707, yet all discussion of these issues centres on England.
  
  The harsh conditions of the past for the working class are largely glossed over - as is the material progress since then in terms of healthcare, housing and working conditions. Yet justifiable concerns over the materialism of the rich are largely waved away - it seems materialism is more of a problem when exercised by the poor and working class. The old class system itself is defended, without much argument, because it’s just the way we did things and it worked. Concerns over family and institutional abuse are rather sneeringly dismissed - but knowing more about what went on behind closed doors in the days children were ‘seen and not heard’, is this the correct attitude? Is it any wonder physical and sexual abuse are so often mentioned in the same case, because the former provided the means to achieve the latter? For an antidote the the dewy-eyed sentimentality, try Dickens or the Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. And Hitchens often falls into the trap he accuses his opponents of, claiming they are acting in bad faith and treating the other side as enemies rather than opponents. Yet on the very same page he accuses New Labour of unpatriotic feeling and hating the Union Jack. This is the same New Labour that delivered arguably the greatest patriotic festival that is likely to happen in any of our lifetimes - the London 2012 Olympic Games.
  
  Despite criticisms, I give the book four starts because for the most part it examines issues in-depth and intelligently, and Hitchens is prepared to bite the bullet at times, for instance on the death penalty admitting that this would mean some wrongful executions. It gives food for thought for liberals - perhaps the Left have become too materialistic and a return to more traditional, communitarian values would be welcomed in many quarters. It is this perception of Labour ‘losing touch’ that is of course often cited as why non-metropolitan England voting for Brexit. Some of the changes, such as suburbanisation, are non-partisan and in some ways regrettable but unavoidable. And for conservatives, well almost all the reasons ‘Britain no longer feels like Britain’ are down to ourselves, and not immigrants, who Hitchens states early on are often far more conservative than the native population these days. At the same time, nothing can stand still, and while change is not justified merely for changes sake, so the reverse is often true.
• 
  Vicki

  A very interesting perspective for anyone concerned about the demise of western civilization
• 
  Damien Hanrahan

  Good
• 
  MichaelK

  I actually enjoyed this book a lot, despite my huge disagreements with Hitchens. His writing is engaging and amusing, and he comes across as someone who means very well but thoroughly detests the way Britain has changed since WW2.
  
  THINGS WERE BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS!!!!!
  
  At its worst, The Abolition of Britain is a book length version of one of those older-person memes complaining about young people being on their mobile phones all the time and taking easy exams that are nothing like as difficult as they used to be. He moans about modern houses having central heating, which they didn't have back the the old days (this means families can be comfortably warm in different rooms, instead of huddling round the single fire; therefore, central heating is destroying traditional family values), and about the metric system replacing imperial measurements. I must admit I found his argument in favour of imperial measurements quite charming. His nostalgia for the Britain of his childhood overshadows the book: he wants to turn the clock back to when Britain was Britain, not this mess that it is today. Alas, he admits that one cannot rewind time, and there are no real policy proposals in this book, just a series of complaints that Britain isn't the way it used to be.
  
  Some of his arguments I found myself having some strong agreement with, especially his view on how the teaching of history in schools has changed, leaving children detached from Britain's past, with no real sense of how our country came to be as it is today. This is something I've had personal experience with - I felt I left school with fuck all knowledge of Britain's history, which I've worked someway to remedying in recent years. Other post-war cultural shifts - such as changes to town planning and architecture - also seemed to destroy Britain's past. Where I live, the urban planners of the 60s and 70s have almost become evil mythological figures for the way they disfigured the city and destroyed its history.
  
  Other sections I strongly disagreed with: Hitchens laments the decline of Christianity, the relaxing of divorce laws and attitudes to sex, the increasing acceptance of LGBT people. He describes the history of these developments succinctly, and explains clearly why he views them so negatively. While I disagree quite vehemently, I found his arguments interesting to engage with since they are, admittedly, not ones I'm accustomed to encountering regularly, and definitely not this well written. I did find some of his views rather repugnant.
  
  At times, Hitchens' worldview is eerily close to the 'Cultural Marxism' conspiracy theory pushed by online alt-rightists: sinister hidden figures have been working behind the scenes to destroy traditional values and our cultural heritage. He describes the changes since WW2 as a 'Cultural Revolution' by the 'Cultural Left'. However, Hitchens' view is more nuanced and closer to reality: he understands that the catastrophe of the two world wars led to significant cultural upheavals in its aftermath (there was a strong desire to break with the past and create a new Britain for the new post-war world) which, because they were so widespread, can give the illusion of a directed grand plan.
  
  Overall, I would recommend reading this book whether you expect to agree with it or not. I enjoyed it despite huge disagreements.