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The disillusion of a top BBC journalist
JOHN GREEN is disappointed by a marred critique of the British establishment by someone who was part of it
AHEAD OF THEIR TIME: Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, deputy leader Tom Watson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn joins supporters as they hold up a banner at a post-Budget rally at the Bethel Convention Centre, West Bromwich in November 2017

Strangeland – How Britain Stopped Making Sense
Jon Sopel, Ebury Press, £22

 

FROM the start, I was sceptical about this book. After all, someone like Jon Sopel, who was for many years a top BBC correspondent — for eight years its man in Washington — must be completely in tune with Establishment ideology or he would not have been given such a job.

Here he takes a critical look at a country that has dramatically changed since he left it in 2014. “Returning to the UK in some ways has been disconcerting,” he writes. “It is, after all, my home; a country I love and am proud of. But either it’s changed, or I have. Maybe both. It just feels like a strange land. This book is, I suppose, about Britishness — the values that have guided us.”

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