I found this a most peculiar book. Its thesis is that everything changed in the two-year period after the election of Margaret Thatcher. On the flyleaf it is described as “the extraordinary untold story of Britain’s revolution in the head: a shift in mass consciousness in which an old, self- doubting nation was transformed into something else: outward-looking, materialistic, colourful, lonely and cruel”.It is odd to read an account of the years I lived through that has such a different flavour from my own experience. The frequent references to a pervading feeling of decline presumably stem from regret at the winding up of the empire. Coming as I do from a family of Irish origin, I regard the process of decolonisation as a great historical achievement and feel proud that