Product Description

Why is emigration rising so quickly? And why is it no longer confined to elderly sun-seekers? Increasing numbers of young families are leaving Britain for a better life. George Walden, who has three children of his own, wrote Time To Emigrate? as letters to a son. It is a humorous but clear-sighted portrait of modern Britain a Britain where many children will lack the opportunities their parents enjoyed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #203888 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-30
• Binding: Paperback
• 266 pages

Review
'A brilliant, often funny, take on the state of Britain.' Michael Burleigh, Literary Review --m

'I love this book.' Marcus Brigstocke --m

'Unashamedly contentious.' Daily Mail --m

Independent
`Catches the Zeitgeist.'

Evening Standard
'Frank... and even affectionate.'

Customer Reviews

All made up
What many reviewers here are missing is that this book, a letter to a son whose 8-year old is supposed to have have been kicked unconscious by immigrants, is a work of fiction. There is no son. There is no grandson. No-one has been kicked unconscious by immigrants. Which renders the whole exercise utterly pointless.

What we have instead is a Daily Mail/Telegraph rant about foreigners. Walden takes a load of tabloid tales and turns Britain into a terrifying world of immigrants kicking 8-year-olds unconscious. Well, who wouldn't emigrate given that? Then he makes out that this fictional 'son' is a wet, hand-wringing liberal who never listened to his dad's wise words... Yeukkk!

But George, is it everywhere that is beset my immigrants kicking 8-year-olds? Could your made-up son not have moved to a leavy part of Surrey and commuted to work? In fact, isn't this whole book project just not very thought out George?

Narrow-minded rubbish from an anti-English snob
Conservative blogger Iain Dale once characterised George Walden as a "pub bore". Having read this inane piece of tripe I'm inclined to agree with him.

Walden is so absurdly blinkered and London-centric he describes England's second-largest city as a "provincial town", and considers most of the North of England, where millions of English people live, to be one giant Sahara desert. He talks of visiting the North (or taking a "provincial detour" as he puts it) as if it was a country like Nigeria or Rwanda. This is a man who orders pie and chips in a Stoke restaurant and states, without evident irony, that he is "slumming it". That is pretty much the extent of his incisive analysis of the state of a large chunk of the English nation.

Oh, and he suggests that the bits of England he doesn't like, i.e. most of it, should be given away to the Chinese. I think he was only half joking.

His description of a Manchester publican who prepared him a rather fine cocktail was toe-curlingly patronising. Much of this book, in fact, comes across as toe-curlingly patronising to anyone who either lives north of Watford or hasn't led the privileged life Walden himself has.

What is bizarre about this supposedly "patriotic" tract is that Walden doesn't seem to like England as it EVER existed. Far from harking back to a Golden Age, he would clearly prefer a version of England (well London anyway, as he doesn't care about the rest) that was more like France, the country in which he now lives. He is simply a cultural and intellectual snob of the sort that, as George Orwell observed, hates his own country.

What's especially disappointing is that he does make some exceedingly good points in places, but the overall tone of his writing is so obnoxious you're less inclined to take them on board.

True English patriots would do well to save their money. Snooty ex-pat bores, on the other hand, will probably appreciate it.

Look after you and yours
This book is written in the form of a long letter the format of which I found got in the way of the content but after a while this is forgotten. The book is made up of, presumably, true anecdotes from the authors life displaying the decay of modern Britain; and quite scary they are too, statistics are sprinkled throughout where they shed light on his assertions.
His son lived on the edge of what sounded like a complete dump and experiences unpleasant things at the hands of the inhabitants therein. The cost of living is so high that he realises even though he is a lecturer he will never make big bucks. The author (his father) tots up how much it would cost to send all his 9 grand children to private school, a cool million, the future looks bleak. The book ends with the son emigrating to Canada.
The message I took from the book is look after your own because the organs government (police, education & health) won't be there for you.