New Model Island: How to Build a Radical Culture Beyond the Idea of England

Description

A study of place, identity, music, politics and regionalism which calls for a radical restructuring of the British Isles. From Orwell-reading centrists to right-wing extremists, there have been countless attempts in recent decades to reimagine the feudal nation that was once England. But there is a strong case for saying that 'England' doesn't exist at all in the twenty-first century. New Model Island examines a disparate range of cultural references--the late Mark Fisher, Dylan Thomas, Alton Towers, Northumbrian activism and Catholic Marxism--as it seeks to reimagine the architecture of the British Isles in the context of the energetic socialist revival of the moment. Part utopian memoir, part elegy for the 2010s, New Model Island is an impassioned call for a new kind of dreaming about post-national identity in a post-capitalist future.

Alex Niven is a writer and editor from Northumberland. Formerly assistant editor at New Left Review and currently Lecturer in English at Newcastle University, his books include Folk Opposition and Definitely Maybe 33 1/3. His writing has also appeared in Jacobin, The Guardian, The Independent, Pitchfork and LA Review of Books.

"Looking for a new England? Alex Niven draws on our diverse identities to forge a radical vision of a once and future land." - Billy Bragg "One of the sharpest, most unusual critics writing today, and with this call for the end of England, he has surpassed himself. Personal, polemical and historical in equal measure, this is a strange, powerful and beautiful book." - Owen Hatherley "An urgent and heartfelt instruction to dig over and reseed the soil of England, so that something more substantial might grow." - Richard King, author of How Soon Is Now? "By reminding us that community is sustained not by rhetoric but by material infrastructure, Niven issues a brave and timely rejoinder to those who would have us believe it can be magicked into being by platitudes and flag-waving." - Times Literary Supplement