This Is British History: TFT Review of Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II by A.N. Wilson

A.N. Wilson’s Our Times is the final volume in his ambitious trilogy discussing the whole of British history. In this third book, Wilson covers 1953-2008. His research, as noted by many others, isn’t great. He cites Wikipedia. In his discussion of Princess Diana and the effects of her death on Britain, Wilson trots out the terms “Dianology” and “Dianologists.” Sometimes Wilson is so full of shit he’s charming: “The Rolling Stones are “more capable of irony” [than the Beatles] and “Jagger’s contortions on the stage, his overt sexuality, his exploitation of the bisexual signals which he gave out, both on and off stage, were all reversions to Lord Byron.”

That’s not to say that this American reader didn’t learn anything.

I learned about Albert Pierrepoint, a prolific executioner who hanged an estimated 433 men and 17 women. Pierrepoint’s record execution time was 7 seconds. I learned that Britain didn’t abolish hanging until 1964, but that capital punishment was abolished altogether by 1971.

I learned about Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, lovers-turned-serial killers. Wilson writes: “Quite early on in their relationship, he persuaded her to buy a tape recorder, then (1961) a new fangled device.” They used it to record their victims scream, and the audiotapes were used against them in court.

I learned that when Prince Charles returns from hunting he likes to find seven boiled eggs lined up for him, organized from runny to hard, so he can find out which egg has been cooked “just right.”

While these are among many highlights from Wilson’s annals of contemporary British history, I’m not sure he should get credit for his presentation of these facts. On the whole, Wilson’s book reads like a confusingly organized Op-Ed in which he argues, grumpily, that Britain has quit being deferential to authority and is less “stuffy about sex.”

Wilson is grumpy, but doesn’t explain why, or offer a critique. I guess it’s not that kind of book. It’s a serious-seeming book, but the more you read, the more suspicious you get. I contend that Wilson’s pointless sentences are among the most enjoyable; Prince Charles is “often intelligent and interesting on the subject of food” and “Suicide as a way out of misery will always remain an option for some.”

However, there are certainly moments in which Wilson has a wizard’s grip on his material and my attention:

1.) Of Winston Churchill:

At the end of November 1952, for example, he asked to be told the numbers of coloured people – as they were called in those days – who had entered Britain. He wanted to know where they lived; also, the number of ‘coloured’ students. Two days later, he asked in Cabinet whether the Post Office was employing any ‘coloured’ workers, pointing out that ‘there was some risk that difficult social problems would be created’ if this turned out to be the case. On 18 December 1952, he set up an inquiry to see how further immigration by ‘coloured’ people could be prevented, and whether they could be kept out of civil service.

2.) Of Michael Ramsey, the 100^th Archbisop of Cantebury:

When his communist atheist sister was widowed, he drove to Oxford to sit with her and her children for half a day but did not utter a word. He had the habit of repeating words or phrases in a trance-like chant. “Baldock” Michael Ramsey once remarked out loud while driving home the morning after he had dined with the Cambridge Union and taken part in a debate. “Baldock. Baldock.” He had raised his eyes from The Times and spotted the signpost as he entered this spectacularly uninteresting Hertfordshire town. “Baldock. Baldock.” Again and again, in monotonous tones, the word “Baldock” was repeated….He must have repeated the word “Baldock” thirteen or fourteen times.”

I wanted a lot more of these surprising distillations of history and a lot less of Wilson yammering. He is skeptical of the influence of the Internet. He seems afraid of Richard Dawkins and drugs. He is ornery toward young women. He writes that artist Tracy Emin “resorted to that device which many women consider necessary as a way of crossing the barricades of male stuffiness – buffoonery. Germaine Greer and Jessica Mitford come to mind.” Wilson describes Sylvia Plath’s “shrill admirers” and opponents of the Suez invasion as a “rent-a-mob of poets, dons, clergy and ankle-socked female graduates.”

Wilson fascinated me with his reflections on the particularly British combination “of frivolity and anger” because it is this very same combination that screws up Our Times. The book isn’t gossipy enough to be fun, and not analytical enough to be useful.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 496 pages.