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“... ruins, the exploration of geographical and social wastelands. Some, following in the footsteps of Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea, see the Northern towns as horrors. Others, indignant at the haemorrhage of jobs and skills, chart the progress of disindustrialisation. Ian Jack’s Before the Oil Ran Out and Robert Chesshyre’s The Return of a Native ...”

“... concedes that he has not seen two of his main examples of the degradation of American culture, Paul Robeson’s Othello and the musical Oklahoma, but that friends he trusts have told him all he needs to know. A second cause of the failure of perception here is the fetish of greatness. ‘Great works of art, and the best hopes of good living’: these ...”