Here’s a summary of what the papers are saying about the book, and it has to start with the kind words of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent. “He dazzles,” she says. “This exuberant and assured book posits the central dilemmas of our times. …
“A sprite takes you by the hand and leads you through the streets (and roads and lanes) of England, shows you things, tells you things, some unsettling, many astonishing and a number plain shocking.
Only Moreton is no sprite. He is an amiable Englishman, warm like the beer they say such men like to drink, yet also sharp, intelligent, observant, sensitive and what we now call emotionally literate.”
“You stay with Moreton because you can’t bear to jump off. He dazzles, has verve, holds your eye; this charismatic, hypnotic celebrant.”
“Required reading,” says Richard Lewis. “Moreton’s persuasive portrayal of what we have evolved into should be required reading for every English man and woman – whatever their creed or colour.” You don’t have to be English of course, but I’m hardly going to argue with someone who also says: “The Cole Moreton revealed in Is God Still an Englishman? is intelligent, vulnerable, modest and philanthropic: an immensely likeable commentator on matters spiritual …” The Independent On Sunday
“You don’t want it to end,” says Peter Stanford in The Observer.“The tension between believing and belonging provides the structure for Cole Moreton’s lyrical, almost elegiac taking of the nation’s spiritual temperature. I say almost elegiac because, having charted the decline of organised Christianity and the loss of the deference traditionally shown to the Church of England and the monarch as its head, Moreton then manages, in his final chapters, to find signs of resurrection.” , but Stanford also says: “He can make you laugh out loud, and generates a momentum that has you turning the pages wanting it never to end.”
“The tension between believing and belonging provides the structure for Cole Moreton’s lyrical, almost elegiac taking of the nation’s spiritual temperature. I say almost elegiac because, having charted the decline of organised Christianity and the loss of the deference traditionally shown to the Church of England and the monarch as its head, Moreton then manages, in his final chapters, to find signs of resurrection.” Read the rest here, but Stanford also says: “He can make you laugh out loud, and generates a momentum that has you turning the pages wanting it never to end.”
“Hugely readable and thought-provoking,” says The Bookseller.“Moreton considers why people have become detached from traditional faith, and studies social history from 1981, when, he maintains, a new morality emerged based on wealth and the creation of fame. An unpretentious, light, conversational style makes this hugely readable and thought-provoking.”
“You’d be silly to wait for the paperback,” says The Tablet. Quite right too. Brendan Walsh reviews my book together with the new one by Peter Stanford and says they are both “intriguing and winsome”. We share a “cool, urbane tone of voice”, apparently, and have produced “stylish, fluent reads, with more dash and insight than in a dozen official reports. They are very handsomely printed and bound too. You’d be silly to wait for the paperbacks.”
“Lasso yourself to the furniture,” says The Sunday Telegraph. Yes, really. “There were times during this book when I thought it was one of the most perceptive and original studies of the English that I’ve read in ages,” writes John Preston. “Yet there were other times when I was equally convinced I was reading the work of a major loon.” Oh well.The book is “a bit right-on” for him, but “leavened by humour, acuity and fluency.” Read the rest for yourself.