Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000. (book review)

Richard Weight Macmillan 866pp 25 [pounds sterling] ISBN 0 333 73462 9

THE PUBLISHERS SUGGEST that this volume promises to `set the agenda' for discussions of national identity in Britain for years to come. It is a weighty tome which is stimulating and challenging to read but is, in the end, disappointing. It may be that this is because its theme is stated too stridently and, in places, too inaccurately to be fully persuasive. This is a book, we are told, about why the people of Britain stopped thinking of themselves as British and began to see themselves instead as Scots, ...

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