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Book Review: Dreams of Leaving and Remaining by James Meek
Brexit explored as the national symptom of a global malady
Anti-Brexit campaigners outside Parliament last week
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SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
by James Meek
(Verso, £16.99)
DO WE need more books about Brexit? Will they be trampled into the mud in the stampede towards a glorious post-EU future, mere outdated ephemera from a previous epoch? As crunch time for Brexit approaches, one would be forgiven for questioning why one would take time out from following the events unfolding in real time.
The publication of James Meek’s Dreams of Leaving and Remaining during this most auspicious of months in Britain’s protracted conscious uncoupling from the EU does not seek to intervene in the debate but give welcome pause for reflection on the origins of this debacle.
In four chapters, Meek tackles the main canards of the EU that fuelled the campaign — fishing, farming, the NHS and employment — with each exploring a different corner of England. In focusing on Grimsby, Norfolk, Leicestershire and the West Country, he makes tacit the claim that Brexit is a particularly English problem.
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