Reviews
‘Patrick Wright is a sensitive, ultra-thoughtful explorer of [the] national necropolis. With a large torch and copious notes he invites the reader to a number of meandering guided tours well off the main footpaths, some to disreputable tombs ignored by the many official study parties busy on this or that “Great Tradition”’.
— Tom Nairn, The Guardian
‘Quite exceptional and richly rewarding . . . By the time you come to the end of this book you will feel that our national autobiography has in fact been ghost-written for us by a team of highly efficient and cynical copy-writers, graduating from those Hovis and cobblestone ads on TV. You won’t feel the same about the Heritage Industry after this devastating series of iconoclastic reflections.’
— Colin Ward, Times Educational Supplement
‘Wright is a sort of post-Marxist, influenced by G.K. Chesterton’.
— D.A.N. Jones, The Listener
‘Wright is a brilliant analyst of cultural meanings and has uncovered . . . a central truth about the force of nostalgia in modern England’.
— Paul Addison, London Review of Books
‘Shrewd, alert and never condescending. At its best, the book offers a model of what a historically-informed cultural criticism ought to be doing in an era of dissolving ideologies.’
— Boyd Tonkin, City Limits
‘Though his title refers to ‘Britain’, Wright’s one glancing mention of Scotland, according to the index, is found in a footnote, and I can remember no others. Just as well. To many other well-meaning Englishpersons have waffled inanely about Celts. The strength of On Living in an Old Country lies in Wright’s obsession with England, his deep knowledge of that country’s cultural forms and of its history, and the blend of affection and exasperation in his writing.’
— Angus Calder, Cencrastus
‘This leads Wright to question Martin Wiener’s account of the pervasive anti-industrial culture in England, against which Thatcher has set her lance. For Wright, the concept of England does not exclude modernisation, only forms of modernisation associated with widening democracy, with socialism and the labour movement. These are remarkable essays, which can be read and read again for they contain much that is important for an understanding of Thatcherism and why socialist attempts to wrest the national past from Conservatism’s grasp have been so unsuccessful.’
— Andrew Gamble, New Society