What We Have Lost: The Dismantling of Great Britain

What We Have Lost: The Dismantling of Great Britain

by JamesHamilton-Paterson (Author)

Synopsis

WHAT WE HAVE LOST IS A MISSILE AIMED AT THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT, A BLISTERING INDICTMENT OF POLITICIANS AND CIVIL SERVANTS, PLANNING AUTHORITIES AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS, WHO HAVE PRESIDED, SINCE 1945, OVER THE DECLINE OF BRITAIN'S INDUSTRIES AND REPLACED THE 'GREAT' IN BRITAIN WITH A FOR SALE SIGN HUNG AROUND THE NECK OF THE NATION.

Between 1939 and 1945, Britain produced around 125,000 aircraft, and enormous numbers of ships, motor vehicles, armaments and textiles. We developed radar, antibiotics, the jet engine and the computer. Less than seventy years later, the major industries that had made Britain a global industrial power, and employed millions of people, were dead. Had they really been doomed, and if so, by what? Can our politicians have been so inept? Was it down to the superior competition of wily foreigners? Or were our rulers culturally too hostile to science and industry?

James Hamilton-Paterson, in this evocation of the industrial world we have lost, analyzes the factors that turned us so quickly from a nation of active producers to one of passive consumers and financial middlemen.

$4.79

Save:$8.47 (64%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 04 Apr 2019

ISBN 10: 1784972363
ISBN 13: 9781784972363
Book Overview:

Author of Empire of the Clouds turns his literary and analytical skills to the wider picture of Britain's lost industrial and technological civilisation.


Media Reviews
'A book that is by turns engrossing and infuriating - a response to Brexit in mechanical form' Evening Standard.
'A book about that moment between the end of the Second World War and Suez, when there was early nuclear power, the first computers, jet engines, fast fighter planes and big ships - all made here. Now Britain imports more than it exports. What went wrong?' i Newspaper.
'He writes beautifully' Literary Review.
Author Bio

James Hamilton-Paterson is one of Britain's most versatile writers. He won a Whitbread Prize for his novel Gerontius and is the author of Marked for Death, Eroica and Blackbird.