The Last Pink Bits - Hardcover

HARRY RITCHIE

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 034066682X ISBN 13: 9780340666821

Publisher: HODDER & STOUGHTON LTD, 1997

Synopsis

. with dustjacket, clean bright copy

About this title

About the Author

Harry Ritchie is a former literary editor of the Sunday Times and is the author of a number of books including Success Stories, an analysis of the English literary scene of the 1950s, and The Last Pink Bits, a tour of Britain's remaining colonies. He was born in Kirkcaldy, was educated at Edinburgh University and Lincoln College, Oxford, and now lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly

Travel buffs and Anglophiles alike will enjoy this unique tour of seven colonies that are among the 1000 or so territories still part of the British Empire. The title derives from the custom of rendering the British Empire in pink on maps. A former literary editor of the Sunday Times, Ritchie (Success Stories) proves a witty and informative guide to Bermuda, Ascension Island, the Falklands, Gibraltar, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, and Turks and Caicos Islands. He found Bermuda, a vacation paradise for the rich, almost too beautiful to be true with economic prosperity and little crime. By contrast, he discovered that residents of St. Helena, where Napoleon was imprisoned from 1815 to 1821, suffer from poverty and unemployment, which, according to the author, results partially from Great Britain's cutbacks in public service and a flawed aid package. Ritchie provides many humorous anecdotes, such as a frustrating and blurry scuba diving experience on Salt Cay (no clothes, no glasses), and vivid descriptions of local personalities. His political observations include a condemnation of Margaret Thatcher for her lack of concern for the inhabitants of the Falklands during the 1982 war and an overview of the complex government of Gibraltar, where much of the citizenry feels abandoned by the British. Ritchie writes with a smooth blend of irony and a faint hint of regret for the Empire's lost grandeur, but he's also serious about one central point: if Britain is to hold on to the remaining pink bits, it has a responsibility to manage them better.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HODDER & STOUGHTON LTD
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 034066682X
• ISBN 13: 9780340666821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 231