The War on The Old

Description

'Better than the alternative', said Mark Twain. As the 21st century rolls on, many of those living through their sunset years may be in two minds about that. It is estimated that by 2020, one in five Britons will be pensioners and living a longer retirement than ever before. 'A good thing', politicians add, through gritted teeth. The truth is that for them it is a damned inconvenient thing. An attitude is developing which regards 'the old' as not a tribute to the better life Britain now provides for its population but a social problem: something that must be 'solved'. John Sutherland (age 77, and feeling keenly what he writes about) examines this intergenerational conflict as a new kind of 'war' in which institutional neglect and universal indifference to the old has reached aggressive, and routinely lethal, levels. This is a book which goes out to provoke but in the process tells some deep and inconvenient truths, about something British society would rather not think about.

John Sutherland is a British academic, newspaper columnist and author. Currently he is an Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has published more books than he cares to count, including Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, The Boy Who Loved Books: A Memoir, Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives and, most recently, the first study of what it is like to read Orwell without a sense of smell - the first of Professor Sutherland's own senses to drop off.