Product Description

Which fifty people made Britain the wreck she is? From ludicrous propagandist Alastair Campbell to the Luftwaffe’s allies, the modernist architects, it’s time to name the guilty. Quentin Letts sharpens his nib and stabs them where they deserve it, from TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, the dumbed-down buffoon who put the ‘h’ in Aspidistra, to the perpetrators of the ‘Credit Crunch’. Margaret Thatcher ruptured our national unity. The creators of EastEnders trashed our brand over high tea. Thus, he argues, are the people who made our country the ugly, scheming, cheating, beer-ridden bum of the Western world. Here are the fools and knaves and vulgarians who ripped down our British glories and imposed the tawdry and the trite. In a half century we have gone from end-of-Empire to descent-into-Hell.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #333 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
[Quentin Letts] discharges his duty with flair and tracer precision...an angry book, beautifully written. --The Spectator, 8 November 2008

The book is forceful and funny in style and unrelenting in its pursuit of its targets. --Observer

Such fun! --The Scotsman

About the Author
Quentin Letts is parliamentary sketch writer and theatre critic for the Daily Mail. A regular broadcaster on radio and television, he was formerly New York correspondent for The Times and gossip columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He presents Radio 4’s series ‘What’s The Point Of?’

Customer Reviews

Some of his 'targets' are very poorly chosen.
Letts' book comes from an interesting perspective; acerbic and amusing pen pictures of those who, as the title tells us, have not made such a positive contribution to our national life. All well and good if the target is a pompous and hubristic politician whose words and actions fail to match, or some greedy business person who puts profit above humanity. But to target someone because of how they look or the way they speak is not only cruel but cheap and lacking in imagination.

In places, the book is amusing but too many pieces have a sense of the school bully about them. Picking on someone whose only apparant failing, according to Letts, is that they are on TV or that they choose to dye their hair is childish. Such writing becomes a cheap shot and as such, lacks any credability.

There is a smug attitude to much of Letts' writing. This is a pity because those targets deserving of scrutiny also deserved more of the authors attention at the expense of those who simply annoy him.

Disappointing
I love a good, light-hearted rant - who doesn't? - so I had high hopes for this book, having recently gone through a couple of Charlie Brooker's finest.

And what a let down it proved to be.

Wielding a clever turn of phrase is usually a good thing, but in this case it feels less like an intelligent use of the English language, and more like a smug way of belittling the proles, who could never hope to master or understand such eloquent diction. This has the effect of almost completely preventing the reader from "warming" to the author, and therefore finding it fairly difficult to sympathise.

Secondly the humour, which is distinctly lacking - yes, there are some clever and amusing sections, but for the most part it's just fairly unremarkable, which is a shame.

Thirdly, the whole thing is just far too political - and I mean that not in the sense of making fun of and ranting about those in the political spotlight (and therefore marking themselves as fair game), but because of the barely concealed political leanings of the author. One of the selected fifty is baroness Thatcher - surely one of the prime examples of an individual to whom the title of the book applies. Sadly, the pages devoted to her read more like a defensive Conservative PR document than a red-blooded rant. To put this into perspective, the next individual in the list is Alan Titchmarsh, which seems slightly unfair on poor Alan!

It isn't often that I struggle to finish a book, but on this occasion I really had to try, and sadly, the effort invested in reading from cover-to-cover was in no way justified by the enjoyment derived from it.

I'd give this book one star - there is the occasional laugh, but you have to work very, very hard to get there.

Not clever. Not funny. Rather dull, I'm afraid
There is nothing like a witty book that pokes fun at pomposity and points out inconsistencies and vanities with ascerbic logic. Sadly this IS nothing like the book I have just described, rather it is in itself an excercise in pomposity and vanity and whilst there is much acid, it is almost logic-free. This book is basically about people whom the author doesn't like, and rather than expose what it is about some of these people that apparently has 'buggered up Britain', Letts makes comments about physical appearance, generalises wildly and reveals his own prejudices.
I really wanted to enjoy this book, as there are many delicious targets he could have chosen, but it does not seem that the intention here was to be witty and clever as much of it is a rather boring peronal rant.