BRITAIN ALONE
THE PATH FROM SUEZ TO BREXIT
PHILIP STEPHENS
Faber, 464pp, £25
Euro-enthusiast Jonathan Lis, in his review for Prospect, found this to be ‘a magnificent, exhilarating book, laying bare the contradictions, misunderstandings and delusions that led Britain first to build a bridge across the Channel and then bulldoze it... What could have been a meandering history becomes, in Stephens’s hands, a gripping saga of blunders, triumphs and missed opportunities. With sharp pacing and lean, subtle prose, he makes his stance clear while letting us piece together the conclusions. Ultimately, the story is a tragedy – a nexus of paranoia and exceptionalism.’
In the Times, Brexiteer historian Robert Tombs agreed that it is ‘well written and enjoyable to read, as one would expect from a seasoned journalist, the chief political commentator for the Financial Times’. But ‘disappointingly from a
Financial Times journalist, there is not even the sketchiest analysis of changes in economics or trade’, while ‘in more than 400 pages, 12 lines are devoted to discussing the problems of the euro – another subject of fundamental importance’. ProEuropean ‘dogma is reiterated throughout, and like all dogma requires no proof’. Hence, this book ‘will comfort the faithful, but I doubt it will make many converts’. Simon Heffer, in the Daily
Telegraph was even more scathing. ‘Not for want of length,’ he declared,
Britain Alone is ‘almost devoid of insight, originality or acuity... The claim on the book’s dust wrapper that it is “magisterial and profoundly perceptive” invites scrutiny under the Trade Descriptions Act: it is a chronic whinge and a book such as one gives for Christmas to someone one deeply dislikes.’