How Britain Really Works

by Stig Abell John Murray 416pp £20 The Week Bookshop £18

This “wry, readable” book is a “sort of Schott’s Miscellany of Britain”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Taking inspiration from old-fashioned children’s encyclopaedias, Stig Abell has written a “potted primer” on the issues behind the news, with chapters on economics, politics, education, the media and so on. Although it “doesn’t dig deep on any topic”, what’s there is “cleverly chosen and nicely put together”. And it is genuinely useful. In a world of fake news and “polarising ideologies”, there is “a lot to be said for writing that is cool and fact-based and, indeed, for having a rough idea of what you’re talking about”.

Abell is “an unusual figure in British life”, said David Goodhart in the London Evening Standard. While he is a “leading member of the literary intelligentsia” (he edits The Times Literary Supplement), he also spent three years working at The Sun. “I like the man’s CV and I really wanted to like his book” – but on several counts, it proved disappointing. For one thing, it doesn’t tell you how Britain “really works”, being little more than a “bluffer’s guidecum-cuttings job of recent British history”. For another, Abell’s positions are uninteresting: this is the voice of “the centre-left establishment”. And finally, the book is “littered with errors of fact and judgement”. That’s a bit harsh, said Trevor Phillips in The Sunday Times. How Britain Really Works may not be perfect – at times you can tell it was written in a rush – but it is “intelligent and clear-eyed”. And many of the facts Abell uncovers are genuinely interesting: “I was surprised to read that 97% of money has no physical existence”; and that “four times as many teens assigned female at birth are referred to the NHS’S gender identity clinic as the number identified as male”.