After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World

I'll bet that Novelist and Historian A. N. Wilson might agree that if the story he tells in "After the Victorians" were pitched to publishers as a novel, it would be rejected as too far-fetched. After all, to what events could he attribute the devolution of the greatest navy the world had ever seen to one that will soon be smaller than Belgium's? To whom would he assign the transfiguration of one of the cradles of the automobile industry to the graveyard of domestic production where the only remaining recognizable brands are owned by foreigners, and Americans and Germans no less? This hypothesis explains why this story is endlessly fascinating and in my experience seldom better told than Wilson in what he accurately terms a "portrait of an age". Anglophiles like me find the telling hard to endure, but Wilson makes the unpleasant process as fresh and entertaining as anything I've come across. I have a few cavils. Especially in the early going, Wilson jumps from character to character and event to event with dizzying speed and apparent lack of direction, and it's just about when total frustration threatens to set in that he slows down and achieves a rhythm that serves his story well for the rest of the book. As one might expect, he writes from a decidedly populist viewpoint and thus does not surprise when he excoriates the World War Two Allies for the bombing of European civilian targets and particularly the United States for its use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aggregating them under the rubric "war crimes". I would posit that he gives too short shrift to the barbaric cruelties of the Japanese exemplified by the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, the biological/medical experiment facility at Manchuria's Unit 731 and Germany's einsatzgruppen, Auschwitz, etc. One could fairly argue that the nations that spawned these medieval terrors deserved what they got. I also have no idea (as other reviewers have observed) where he got the notion that one of Roosevelt's main, if not principal, war aims was to enfeeble Britain in order that America would replace it in the world's hegemonic order after the dust settled. He seems convinced but is not convincing. In addition, he draws some curious conclusions from his ruminations on the causes and effects of Britain's post-World War Two welfare state, citing the National Health Service as its greatest achievement while at the same time conceding that its remit of free health care for everyone is likely unsustainable over the long run. And on the subject of the welfare state with its collectivist regime, he misses one of the juiciest quotes of the era. In 1945, Aneurin Bevan, generally credited to be one of the principal architects of the NHS, said of the Labor Party's opposition, "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time." The Labor Party won, and two years later, both coal

A.N. Wilson is a prolific author. His new book "After the Victorians" is a sequel to his bestselling "The Victorians." Wilson has done a wonderful job of chronicling the long goodbye of British imperial might. We see Britain lose the jewel in the crown India; be drained of gold and young manhood in two catastrophic world wars; see the empire's sun set in colonies from Africa to the Middle East. We see a falling off of genius in literature, the arts, music and governmental leadership. Wilson jumps from one topic to the next with rapidity which will be annoying to some readers. This is especially true for those who are not familiar with many of the subjects and topics covered in the many pages in this book. As an anglophile and history buff I personally enjoyed the survey presented by the Welshman who writes so well. This book is a tour but not an in depth study of the land of Shakespeare. If you want a better knowledge of the general trends and major players in England from the death of Victoria in 1901 to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952 this is a good read. Recommended.

A. N. Wilson has given us a remarkable history of Britain in the 20th century. His earlier work, The Victorians, described the rise of empire in the 19th century. The current volume presents the story of the decline of empire. It is filled with helpful anectdotal support for the main thesis and this makes for pleasurable reading. But the main thrust of the work is the analysis of the way in which the pretensions and myths of the Victorian era lingered into the next century and influenced, mostly for mischief, the events of the century. Winston Churchill figures prominently in the book. His public career spanned the half century. His own worldview was profoundly Victorian, yet he presided over the events of World War II and its aftermath that dismantled the Victorian conceits and ushered Britain into a diminished place in world politics. Wilson does not miss any of the cultural events that explain or frustrate the decline and this thoroughness adds to the enjoyment of the book. The two volumes of A. N. Wilson's treatment of empire constitute a fresh way to study the 19th and 20th centuries of Britain. (A modest caveat: In his description of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, he mistakenly identifies the "island of Honolulu" which, of course, should be Oahu; and he suggests that Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian, came to the US from Europe but was, in fact, an American by birth).

A.N. Wilson is a prolific author who specializes in religious and literary biographies. Three years ago, Mr. Wilson took up the recounting of historical eras with "The Victorians" which covered the history of England from 1834 to 1901. Appropriately, he has researched the sequel called "After the Victorians" for all the upheavals that took place between 1901-1953 (The Great Depression, World War I and II, et al). Both books are a cultural and political sampling of those five decades and are NOT a comprehensive history of England. How could they be definitive, when the books cover the hundred year zenith and fall of the British Empire in 1,000+ pages. As an introduction to the major events of those 100 years, they perform that task nicely. "After the Victorians" covers the tales that Mr. Wilson chooses to tell and he is a good storyteller. The only caveat for the reader is in his conclusion about America intentionally dismantling the British Empire. He is so paranoid about the evil "American Plot" of destroying England as a rival that those sections are actually hilarious for any reader familiar with American foreign policy of the 1940's. It is an interesting book to read, especially if the reader goes on to read other English histories covering the first half of the 20th century.

A.N. Wilson has followed in the footsteps of his earlier volume on "The Victorians" with this book covering the 1901-1950 period in British history. He employs the same approach and has produced another contribution of substantial value. How to describe his method is the challenge. Sometimes it is like free association, as he moves from topic to topic, but if that is the case, it is well structured free association. Basically, he just covers a long list of topics, some in more detail than others, moving from chapter to chapter. For example, in this volume he touches upon (among other topics) Kaiser Bill and Germany; Elgar's music; Anglican theology; H.G. Wells, the Balfour Declaration; India and the Empire; the class system; scientific developments; Noel Coward; John Maynard Keynes; Churchill and FDR and the "special relationship"; Hitler and the crisis of the late 1930's; Lord Haw-Haw; the impact of intensive bombing during WWII and so forth. Hard to describe, but somehow it all works quite beautifully. The range of topics and the author's command of them are astounding, although this is more a survey than an intensive analysis of any single topic. By the end of the book, even though a zillion topics have been covered rather briefly, the reader's overall depth of understanding has immeasurably been improved. However, at about page 434, Wilson seems to run off the track a bit. He devotes many pages to criticism of the USA, suggesting that FDR hoped to use WWII as a device to free India and limit the British empire. He suggests that the British really played the key role in developing "the bomb", and handed over these critical secrets to the U.S., including a "schizohrenic" J. Robert Oppenheimer. For Wilson, Lend Lease really was a financial bonanza for the Americans, rather than a unique solution to Britian's crushing need for war materials. FDR's unconditional surrender announcement sealed the fate of a Russian controlled eastern Europe. Finally, without substantiation, he asserts that Truman used the bomb in Japan not for military reasons, but to send a shiver up the Russians' spine. Wilson here is paralleling other recent British authors--the best example being Volume III of Skidelsky's biography of Kenyes where he suggests that U.S. played real hardball in terms of postwar economic demands in order to undermine the extent of British power. Why Wilson chose to go off on this tangent is a mystery; but the book's overall value is not seriously impacted. It remains a must read for those interested in Britain during the 20th century and its many contributions.