The Abolition of Britain - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The book received considerable attention in the British media upon its publication, and was also reviewed in a number of US newspapers.

The book's reception in Britain was mixed. In a scathing review in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee mocked the book. She noted that the author "evokes the Britain of my own childhood, of the 50s and 60s, with a deadly accurate pen", but because of this factor, the book is "a joyful read for liberals. Most of it is given over to eulogies about the past that have precisely the opposite effect of the one intended". Other British reviewers were more positive in their assessments. Mary Kenny in the Catholic Herald considered it "a series of knowledgeable and perceptive linked essays in the tradition of George Orwell". John Colvin, writing in the New Statesman thought the "barren times" in which we live "have found their ideal chronicler" who "in this clear and uninhibited work, reminds us of the tyranny of the new" and that "it is difficult to contradict his belief that a great nation seems almost to have vanished, its traditions mocked and enfeebled".

In The Spectator, John Redwood wrote that he was "exhilarated" by the book, and that Hitchens had written with "passion and flair". Redwood added that Hitchens was at his best when "exposing the way in which our educational system and cultural standards have been systematically undermined". Also writing in The Spectator, Peregrine Worsthorne was more circumspect: "after eloquently telling the tale of how successive British parliamentary governments, Tory as much as Labour, have 'abolished' old Britain, Hitchens reaches the wholly illogical conclusion that that same British democracy alone is quite capable of putting the clock back". He also stated that Hitchens was wrong to hold Eurosceptic views.

Alan Cowell, in a mostly critical review in The New York Times, stated "in the 1950s and 60s, Britain was a gentler, more deferential place; the churches were better attended; children did give up their bus seats to adults; and a generation was nurtured on a history of wartime victory and imperial grandeur that had yet to be derided as myth or oppression". However, Cowell questioned the "Canute-like subtext" of the book that "the destructive forces of television, McDonald's and American popular culture could have been held back". In The Weekly Standard, another US publication, Jonathan Foreman wrote that "at its best this book combines superb reporting (especially about the hijacking of education by frustrated leftists) with a heartbreaking analysis of one of the strangest revolutions in history. And in many ways it is the most important of the torrent of books that have dealt with the crisis of British identity". However, Foreman added that the book suffered from "cranky fogeyism", and he was particularly critical of both the chapter analysing the Chatterley trial and the premise that satirical television and radio programmes of the late 1950s and early 1960s contributed towards destroying British national unity.