'A History of Modern Britain' - Andrew Marr - Review

 It is difficult for an author to think dispassionately about times which he has lived through, and no easier for his readers. Selection is everything, and virtually bound to be tendentious, as this is. This work is densely packed with fact and anecdote, full of unexpected and familiar accounts, never dull. Selective and opinionated, certainly, but Marr’s bias is subtle and unobtrusive. He makes no secret of his rightful respect for Margaret Thatcher, for example, or of his contempt for Harold Wilson. It is a resounding ‘yes’ to the liberal British society, no to socialites and old nobility, support for Roy Jenkins, diminishment of Bevan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

These are conventional judgments, perhaps too conventional to count as bias. Yet Marr rows against the tide just enough to keep his reputation for bespoke thinking. There is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of that remarkable figure J. Enoch Powell, infamous for his ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech in 1968, and a frank recognition of the damage done to Britain’s social coherence and sense of identity by the scale of immigration over the past half-century. A case is made for the boring 1950s and the radical 1960s as a period of political and economic inertia but a cultural reawakening.  His heavy use of theatrical examples is undoubtedly derived from his trade but does not suffice to define the mood and beliefs of an era. The combination of music, consumer tastes and radical movements such as the ‘Angry Brigade’ are much more effective at attempting to raise a culture from the pit of history.

Marr is merciless in his dissection of Wilson’s limited intellectual background, his rigid political judgment and the lack of substance behind the jests and slogans, as well as the craven pursuit of the line of least resistance. Yet behind these clashes of personality between the leading politicians of the time, there is, as he points out, a wider theme. In their different ways, the generation of Heath and Wilson embodied a political idealism born in the war years. Much of the history of modern Britain has been concerned with the fading of those ideals, on the right and the left alike, as they encountered impassable political and economic obstacles and indifference from the electorate. The rise of what Marr calls ‘consumerism’ has confined politics to mere technical management.

The gripping narrative and the depth of Marr’s content means that it merits a 5/5