Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130879 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Sunday Times
`Rarely has a wake proved so much fun'

Spectator
`A rattling good read'

Peregrine Worsthorne, New Statesman
`Immensely readable and sardonic … one puts the book down chuckling, as well as feeling wiser'

Customer Reviews

Humorous but insightful.
For most of the twentieth century the Conservative Party dominated British politics, however by the end they had been routed at the polls and appeared to have nowhere to go. Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book explains in a thought provoking but sometimes humourous way how the Conservative Party lost its way. His main conclusion seems to be that the era of Conservative dominance from 1979-1997 was in fact bad for the Conservative Party as a whole as it gained a reputation for being the nasty party due to its introduction of necessary but unpopular free market reforms. This meant that the old Tory One-Nation Conservatism which had been successful in the past was displaced by free-market radicalism which became increasingly unpopular and ultimately led to defeat in 1997 and also the Party becoming controlled by free market radicals who were dogamtic in their belief. All in all this is a very good book although I find it slightly depressing as a Conservative supporter.

Doesn't do what it says on the tin
This disappointing, ill-focused sprawl of a book does not live up to its title. Irrespective of its author's frequently one-sided views, a book called 'The Strange Death of Tory England' (as opposed to 'of the Tory Party') should be about England, and how English people played their part in the downfall of Major. Instead, Wheatcroft makes the fatal mistake of assuming that history is nothing more than the biographies of famous men; he concentrates on the experiences and views of only a few people at the top of the party (basically, his mates at the time), when it would have been so much more interesting and profitable to examine the views and values of the electorate, who, in the final analysis, are the only people in a democracy who can cause the 'strange death' of any political party or ideology. Worst of all, however, the book is almost entirely journalistic descriptiveness, despite the in-depth analysis promised by the title, which as a reader I really missed. Wheatcroft only starts analysis of the events he describes on page 269 out of 285, and even then, it is shallow and highly subjective. If you want to read a book that should be more accurately called 'The Conservative Party in the late 20th century from the viewpoint of one sympathetic journalist' then you'll like it. But for such a promising title, 'The Strange Death of Tory England' offers little more insight than if you had followed the events described in the newspapers at the time. Wheatcroft adds very little value here, and his book is best avoided.

Incisive, if occasionally cruel lament
It is rare to come away from an intelligent work on long term trends in British politics laughing out loud, but Geoffrey Wheatcroft manages to entertain with his wit, while offering what is at least an interesting analysis. His story has a fair number of villains and hapless suckers, from the 'fogey right' led by writers such as Charles Moore, to John Major, depicted as a hapless nonentity. Interestingly, few of the reviewers above seem much impressed by one of the points Wheatcroft makes, which is that culture and what he calles 'narrative argument' shape politics as much, or more than, economics. Parties and movements win out because they inspire feelings, ideas, passions. While the economic case of the left collapsed, socialism's sympathisers in the cultural elite were busily learning to dominate the narrative of society, to define the territory of argument: the new world they created was one in which the Tory traditions looked stale, patrician and outdated. Certain groups within British society could have offered a natural electoral base for the Tories, and yet Wheatcroft shows that, such was the cultural climate, people routinely lied to pollsters about Conservative voting intent, so deeply unfashionable had it become. He offers the IRA as a striking example of his thesis, outwitting the Tories by commanding narrative and imagery throughout the world, so that for example Bobby Sands became revered in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, while the IRA's Tory opponents dithered. The strange death of Tory England was caused by a failure to reinvent the party, robustly and decisively, in the face of new circumstances which require adaptation, not rigid doctrine.