All In It Together: England in the Early 21st Century

Description

The headlines may be all Covid now, as a few short months ago they were all Brexit, but the breakdown of the UK's political sphere has been a long time coming, and it is a symptom of a much deeper malaise. We seem to have lost our faith in all our social institutions, from parliament and the press to banking and religion. All in It Together tracks the spread of this wider disillusionment over the years 2000 to 2015 in a fast-paced cultural, political and social history that will be required reading for years to come. Drawing on both high politics and low culture, Alwyn Turner takes us from Downing Street to Benefits Street as he tells the defining story of contemporary Britain. From key issues such as immigration and the Scottish independence referendum, to grime, Grindr and the smoking ban, All in It Together is brilliantly researched, intellectually stimulating and hugely entertaining.

Alwyn Turner is best known for his trilogy of books about Britain in the last decades of the 20th century: Crisis? What Crisis? (2008), Rejoice! Rejoice! (2010) and A Classless Society (2013). He has appeared on Panorama, The Moral Maze, Today and Richard and Judy, and written for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Financial Times.

Up there with the best ... Reading it is almost like an out-of-body experience, in which you realise that your life and times will one day be as ancient to others as the Neolithic period is to us ... All In It Together zings along with such telltale facts and figures, often with an injection of black humour ... Wonderfully shrewd ... Brilliant -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * Hugely engaging ... Turner's genius lies in finding the odd little stories that get under the nation's skin and reveal what people were really thinking ... He writes with a tremendous sense of fun. The result is a rare thing: not just a serious work of contemporary history, but an unashamed, 24-carat hoot -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * Reading Alwyn Turner's account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like trying to recall a dream from three nights ago. The theme and the mood feel uncannily familiar, but the details are downright implausible ... His great skill lies in spotting themes that we might have missed the first time around -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Astute and entertaining -- Philip Johnston * Telegraph * Turner may be an anorak, but he is an acutely intelligent anorak -- Francis Wheen * New Statesman * Turner's seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers -- David Kynaston Turner writes with great fluidity, his tone underpinned by a prevailing sense of irony: even the footnotes are enjoyable ... This is a serious undertaking by a popular historian -- Charlotte Henry * TLS * For the first draft of very recent history, there's no more entertaining writer than Alwyn Turner ... a gloriously funny romp ... amid the welter of anecdotes he also has a thoroughly compelling argument about the loss of trust, the rise of populism and the emergence of Nigel Farage as the most influential politician of the age -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times Books of the Year *