Wednesday 19 September 2012

"The making of modern Britain" by Andrew Marr

Brilliant. Andrew Marr charts the influences that have made us what we are by recounting weird and bizarre incidents.

He starts by explaining that in pre-WW1 Britain it was so easy to buy guns that when in the Tottenham Outrage of 1904 the unarmed police were chasing armed anarchists they borrowed guns from passers by. In the 1930s Oswald Mosley seeks funding for his fascists from the Jewish owners of Marks and Spencer. When his Blackshirts get political uniforms banned the Greenshirts (the political wing of the folk-dancing tendency) march carrying their green shirts aloft on coat hangers. Sculptor Eric Gill (famed for Ariel at the BBC and Gill Sans) enjoyed all sorts of sex including homosexuality, incest and bestiality. Earl Marshall Haig's 1928 funeral was attended by more people than Princess Diana's.

At every turn Marr amuses and then upends your prejudices about this fascinating era. Brilliant. September 2012; 429 pages.

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