Peter Hitchens

"To him [Hitchens] "over-use of private cars" is "crazed", rehousing of slum dwellers "deportation", defence spending cuts "pitiless" employment of women "conscription", anti-gun laws "demented", the Plowden report on education simultaneously "tragic", "nauseating" and "drivel". This is Paul Johnson without the sense of humour. ... Again, I am ready to offer a small prize (say, a copy — indeed my copy — of this book) to anyone who can explain what Hitchens means in asserting that "Abolishing the Greater London Council created the precedent for abolishing the House of Lords"; or how "our monarchy" was "robbed of much of its role by the Tory decision to elect party leaders". ... When I finished reading this book, I thought I had better have a bracing cold shower. However, it then occurred to me that the whole thing might be a sustained spoof. If so, I have to admit that, although it goes on a bit, it is very effective."

"My Friend and colleague, Peter Hitchens, is incandescent with vexation. He has received a very disparaging (and to my mind wholly unfair) review of his new book The Abolition of Britain — From Lady Chatterley to Tony Blair from Gerald Kaufman MP, writing in The Daily Telegraph. Mr Kaufman's sneering view is not a surprise, given the man's liberal-left-secularist attitudes. But The Daily Telegraph is. Peter imagined that the one newspaper which would understand his evocation of the conservative and Christian values that England once espoused should be The Daily Telegraph. He knows he will get a hostile review from The Guardian and The Independent. The liberal-left establishment always give him a hard time, though they always look after their own. His book, published this week by Quartet, is a series of knowledgeable and perceptive linked essays in the tradition of George Orwell, analysing the way that this country has changed since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965."

"When the political history of the Blair era is written, it may well be concluded that the most effective conservative opposition came not from politicians, but journalists. It often seems that the charge against New Labour is led by the Telegraph and Spectator, by Charles Moore and Boris Johnson, or from some Murdoch journalists, rather than by William Hague. So perhaps it should not comes [sic] as a complete surprise that the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works should be a polemic by a right-wing journalist, Peter Hitchens, rather than a Tory pamphlet or an MP's speech. ... On much of this agenda, Hitchens is simply out of time. ... [T]he idea of a widespread return to a belief in literal damnation, to public hostility towards homosexuals and the shaming of single mothers, seems utterly implausible."

"A very useful book is published today. Mad, obnoxious, elegantly written incoherent nonsense, it draws up the true battle lines of politics now far better than many of the attempts to summarise the slippery Third Way or the heart of Blairism. ... This absurdly over the top book ... is a joyful read for liberals. Most of it is given over to eulogies about the past that have precisely the opposite effect of the one intended. It will make any sane person whoop with glee to be alive now and not then. It will confirm every good liberal's trust in human progress. Things really are getting better and better."

"Peter Hitchens's book ... can also be read as an obituary for the old Daily Express. When Hitchens joined the paper, in 1977, it was still the voice of grumpy suburban reactionaries. Now it is edited by a founder of Spare Rib magazine and owned by a Blairite. Even the word Daily has been dropped from the title. Hitchens is the sole survivor of Fleet Street's Mary Celeste, raging against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

"It is most peculiar. The very Tories who most dislike what has happened to Britain in the last half-century or so — permissiveness, etc — are the very ones who most want to preserve the independence of the nation state responsible for doing all the damage. At any rate that is the impression one gets from a new book entitled The Abolition of Britain (Quartet Books) by that redoubtable Tory nationalist, Peter Hitchens. For, after eloquently telling the tale of how successive British parliamentary governments, Tory as much as Labour. have 'abolished' old Britain, he reaches the wholly illogical conclusion that that same British democracy alone is quite capable of putting the clock back. If only it were."