Something About England

Bringing joy into my life this week is Mark Steel's latest book, In Town. In it, he visits various towns and cities across the UK that have been subjected to an all-out assault of global homogeneity and repulsive chain stores, and trying to find the bits and pieces of local culture that survive and thrive in spite of the onslaught.

It's fascinating, moving, and above all, hilarious. He warmly describes Birmingham's eccentric road system ("like a Scalextric course after the dog's sat on it"), reveals how the first railway from Oxford to Didcot was owned by Oxford University and required all passengers to have at least a Masters Degree in order to travel, gets banned from a bird sanctuary on the Isle of Portland on account of his Socialist politics, and explains how Walsall used to be a hotbed of anarchism where people celebrated cows being blown up in Belgium.

As the upcoming Olympics begin patronisingly selling McBritain PLC to the rest of the world, it's reassuring to know that my actual country still exists beneath the globalised lie, as wonderful and insane as it's ever been.