‘The time and energy and thought which we are all giving to the Brave New World is wildly disproportionate to what is being given to the Cruel New World.’ (British economist J.M. Keynes, quoted page 40)
The full title of this book is The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation, which very accurately states its aim and its Manichaean structure. It is not your average leisurely, rather reassuring history book but a fierce and forcefully argued polemic which, if you’re British, is intellectually and emotionally devastating.
The basic premise is this: When Barnett wrote the book, received opinion tended to think that Britain fell behind its industrial competitors (America, Germany and Japan) and prey to the so-called ‘British disease’ of abysmal industrial performance, in the decades after the end of the Second World War. During the war itself, the nation had pulled together…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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