Friday, February 24, 2012

I spoke too soon

Earlier, in customary snarl mode, I reckoned on getting very few reviews for the book, but I hadn't reckoned with the fantastically brilliant James Delingpole doing a wickedly insightful piece in The Spectator.

"What North has achieved here is admirable", he writes, leaving me purring so loudly they are ganging up to evict me from the "quiet coach" where I temporarily reside.

Dellers then continues, saying, "He has set out to reclaim for the people of Britain the credit for a glorious victory which was stolen from them by the political Establishment". He concludes the review with a quote from the end of the book:
To restore that history is to change the way we think about ourselves. We are part of a nation which, in time of peril, rallied and by collective endeavour engineered its own salvation... That makes us a different people from the passive, shadowy inhabitants of a myth — and all the more powerful. What we could do once we can do again.
Needless to say, lesser mortals cannot actually read the thing yet. Despite what the publisher says (who exists only to torture innocent authors), Amazon tells us that deliveries go out on 8 March. Late is better than never, they say.

In the meantime, of course, you could read that other brilliant book, Watermellons by ... er ... Dellers which, by a strange coincidence, is also reviewed in the Speccie. "Do not be deceived by his sometimes flippant and always highly readable prose. This is a serious and significant book", writes Matt Ridley. "He gets me EXACTLY right", says James.

And he does ... I'll post my own review soon.

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