The Return of a Native Reporter

A British journalist reports on his rediscovery of his native country after four years in the United States, exploring the changed attitudes of British society and the faded sense of national unity

Englishman Chesshyre served for four years in the U.S. as correspondent for the British newspaper The Observer. He returned home in 1985 to find dismaying changes. Here he describes decaying, extremely filthy cities and towns, bumbling institutions (National Health, the school system, etc.) and unfulfilled hopes sparked by the North Sea oil discovery. He charges that the English are now viciously racist, the rich indifferent to the poor and homeless, the citizenry apathetic to the alarming rise in crime. The thoughtful, perceptive author argues that at the root of these troubles is a constricted class system that continues to keep people in "their place." Those with enterprisescientists and other professionalsemigrate in large numbers, adding to the failings Chesshyre lays at the door of 10 Downing Street.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.