Rating: 4/5
Review:
Enjoyable and insightful
I enjoyed this book very much. It is partly a Bryson-like trip to various places which might in some way be linked to "Middle England" and partly an attempt to analyse what "Middle England" might actually mean. I think Stuart Maconie makes a very good job of both aspects.
What I like most about the book is Maconie's willingness to be pleased with things rather than carp and look for fault. A DJ and rock journalist who, in his own words, "grew up on a council estate in a grimy Lancashire cotton town" might be expected to sneer at comfortable, largely southern middle-class people and places, but he never does. He loves much of England and Englishness in all its forms and talks of Middle England's quiet virtues far more than its actual or supposed faults. When he does criticise he makes a careful case and never resorts to stereotype or lazy generalisation. Toward the end of the book he says, "When I think of Middle England I think of tolerance and kindness. So it irks me that the phrase has become a byword for sour prejudice and insularity." He makes a good case for this throughout the book and I found it very endearing that he often and quite sincerely uses the word "sweet" to describe things.
Some reviewers here found Maconie's references to literature and music to be facile and smug. I have to disagree - I thought they were very acutely chosen to illustrate his points and seemed to me to come from a man who has a deep and genuine love of the books and writers he quotes. (He does need to brush up considerably on the work of Sir Isaac Newton, mind you.) The prose is extremely readable, and the book is often amusing and sometimes rather moving. I found it an insightful, interesting and enjoyable read and warmly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment