Quite an inspiration. I don't agree with all of his summing up chapter, but I don't need to do that to appreciate his arguments and conclusions. It's a useful way of looking at the battles we are facing day to day so another weapon to use. Doesn't provide any ready made answers as to the way forward, but then who does? Well worth reading. ( )

Quite an inspiration. I don't agree with all of his summing up chapter, but I don't need to do that to appreciate his arguments and conclusions. It's a useful way of looking at the battles we are facing day to day so another weapon to use. Doesn't provide any ready made answers as to the way forward, but then who does? Well worth reading. ( )

I had expected to find 'Real England' interesting but annoying, like most polemics. But Kingsnorth is not an aggressive writer and, while I don't agree with everything he says, his picture of bland corporate britain was depressingly convincing. He argues that to surrender what makes our living environment interesting and quirky to the forces of profit and bureaucracy is a huge shame and gives examples that shocked me, and I think I know a bit about this kind of thing (80% of harbourfront properties in Cornish fishing villages given over to holiday lets and second homes? The ability of pubcos to force their tenants to pay over the market prices for beer they have to stock? The eradication of the vast majority of our orchards?).

As a Londoner with non-English parents, I find it hard to identify with the specifically English identity he gives to the argument and the West Lothian question aside, am not sure an English Parliament is the answer. What do I have in common with someone from Carlisle that I don't have with someone from Dumfries? But I agree that it's a shame that English national identity has been colonised by far right groups. I also think he missed a trick in not exploring what England means to first- and second-generation immigrants, something observed interestingly by other writers and broadcasters.

I also think the emotive side of his argument, part and parcel with its heartfelt sincerity, slightly hazes the fact that corporations themselves and the people within them are mostly not evil, they are just aren't necessarily the best-motivated people to make decisions about our communities. But Real England is anything but a sentimental book and its message that to worry about these things is neither nostalgic nor anti-progress is one worth listening to. A book to be taken seriously. ( )

While there is much in the general premise of this book that I agree with - that the British highstreet is becoming a homogenised and bland place that ultimately threatens consumer choice for example - the general tone of it was ultimately off-putting. The insinuation that cities/urban centres are not 'English' reveals a snobbery or provincialism that overlooks English history and reality. The world Kingsnorth uses as examples of 'Real England' is often entertaining, but there is almost a bigotry against anything that dares to be progressive, which is at odds with some of the greatest achievements of England over the past century.

In summary - the author doesn't like towns, and seems to think we should all live in small, preferably rural, communities. And if you don't like that idea you are obviously someone who is stupid enough to have been sucked into the insidious globalisation that is ruining this sceptred isle. ( )