- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane (31 Mar 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0713998016
- ISBN-13: 978-0713998016
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.4 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 500,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Strange Death of Tory England
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Product Description
Sunday Times
‘Rarely has a wake proved so much fun'
Spectator
‘A rattling good read’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a splendid book. Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft explores the reasons behind the slow decline of the British Conservative (Tory) Party, once the undisputed mistress of the British political scene, now reduced to a rump of quarrelsome, factional schisms, disunited, directionless and with no sense of being able to return to power. It's a wonderful read and I recommend that anyone interested in politics, contemporary history or ploitical thought packs this thoroughly enjoyable tale of a fall into the political wilderness in their holiday reading.
The tale is told by a canter through Tory party history; although the book was completed prior to Tony Blair's historic third Labour Party win in May 2005, the writing is clearly on the wall. Wheatcroft ably describes the twists and turns of policy and personalities in recent British history and his evocation of ideas and individuals, often with a few carefully chosen sentences, is superb. He (correctly in my view) identifies and dissects the reasons for the fall of the Tory party - disunity, the stealing of Thatcherism's thunder by Tony Blair and above all a total change in social outlook and mores to which point a recent Daily Telegraph correspondent could state 'we are all social democrats now'.
And the tale is told with admirable clarity and a wonderful acerbic humour. Here is Geoffrey on the Referendum Party - 'in many ways it was a risible affair, noisily supported at one glitzy gathering after another by such notabilities as...and altogether a fine cross-section of rich white trash; there has been nothing like it since the flapper in 'Vile Bodies' complained, 'The Independent Labour Party? Why haven't I been asked?'. And on the hapless William Hague - 'In an age of appearances his own did not help, part foetus and part death's head, apparantly without having gone through the usual intervening phase of human life'. And on the Countryside Alliance march - 'To watch that parade of the rural classes and what was left of the landed gentry was like peering at something from a nature reserve'. His comment on puritanism that 'whether taking religious or secular form, Puritanism is a minority taste; most people want to build the just city less than they want their cakes and ale, particularly the ale' deserves an immediate place in any book of political quotations.
Of course there must be quibbles despite Geoffrey's generally sound analysis and his acute judgement. Although most of his glancing sideswipes hit their target, some are heavily off beam. To describe the liberation of a friendly, harmless small nation from the clutches of a psychopathic dictator and his appalling bullies as 'raising more questions than it answered' (his comments on the First Gulf War) raises some difficult moral and political questions of its own. And Geoffrey's opposition to ID cards seems more rooted in a 1950s schoolboy libertarianism than a recognition of current world realities. But on the main issues, Geoffrey is sharp and sound and even if one disagrees with him, there's plenty to engage with and mull over.
Perhaps the book's one great weakness is that Geoffrey can never quite pin down the essential nature or philosophy of the Tory Party. To many of us outside, it represents little more than an attempt to conserve the lifestyle and views of a priviliged and affluent minority, disguised as a political party. Once this is appreciated, the decline and fall becomes inevitable. And the party seems utterly unable to learn. Just a couple of weeks ago a group of Right wing Tory MPs, no doubt to the delight of the party's incrasingly elderly and reactionary membership, launched a platform for a new direction based on an American style religious conservatism that has not, nor ever has had, any market in Britain. A suitable subtitle for this acute and worthwhile read (and the Tories themselves) would have been 'They just don't get it'.
Format:Paperback
Great book, full of wit and insight into how it went so wrong for the Tories. Unfortunately, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the main plank of the book - that the Tories are finished - proved premature; strange that the author came to this conclusion, as there are frequent references to Labour returning from the dead after 1983. Wheatcroft seems to think that Blair killed the Tories, but failed to look at what would happen post 2005 - Blair discredited and Brown a dismal failure. Read it for the wit, but not the crystal-ball gazing.
Format:Hardcover
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.
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Most Recent 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. Read more
Published on 9 April 2008 by HBH
Essential Reading, but flawed.
The first thing to say about this book is that it is written by a conservative, so for those not of this political persuasion, parts of the book, such as the general praise of... Read more
Published on 24 Jun 2005 by Donaldo
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