Conville & Walsh
literary agency
Real England
- Author: Paul Kingsnorth
- Category: Non-fiction Current Affairs / Politics Animals / Environment
- Publisher: Portobello
- Pub date: 1 April 2008
- Length: 304 pages
About Real England
I would like Gordon Brown to be strapped into a chair and have it read to him. And not let out of it again until he has given Paul Kingsnorth a powerful position in government
- Nicholas Lezard, GUARDIAN
In REAL ENGLAND, Paul Kingsnorth bears witness to the death of an old England and the birth of a new – the decline of an England in which the small, the ancient, the indefinable, the meaningful, the interesting and the quirky are being systematically scoured out and bulldozed to make way for the clean, the sophisticated, the alien, the progressive, the corporate. The things that make our landscapes different, distinctive or special are being eroded, and replaced by things which would be familiar anywhere: the same chain shops in every high street; the same bricks in every new housing estate; the same signs on every road; the same menu in every pub. The result is stark: everywhere is becoming the same as everywhere else. Everywhere is becoming slicker, more corporate, more remote, less real. We are witnessing the McDonaldization of England.
What does it mean to be an individual in the twenty-first century? Can individuality survive in the age of a global market that demands uniformity of appearance, mass production, standardization of culture and standardization of taste? Why must we cease to value the distinctiveness of where we are? Must we really become consumers on a faceless, placeless international trading floor? In REAL ENGLAND, Paul Kingsnorth exposes the widespread elimination of character and authenticity from the landscape we all live in, explaining why it is happening, who is responsible and who is fighting to change it while, at the same time, offering a vision of a future in which money, bureaucracy and blinkered economic ideology do not combine to reshape our culture in the interests of global corporations.
About the Author
Paul Kingsnorth has worked in an orang utan rehabilitation centre in Borneo, as a peace observer in the rebel Zapatista villages of Mexico, as a floor-sweeper in McDonalds and as an assistant lock-keeper on the river Thames. He studied history at Oxford University between 1991 and 1994, was arrested during the Twyford Down road protests of 1993 and was named one of Britain’s ‘top ten troublemakers’ by the New Statesman magazine in 2001.
Paul’s writing focuses on the connections between people and places, and on the increasingly strained relationship between humanity and the natural world. He has worked on the comment desk of the Independent and as deputy editor of The Ecologist, the world’s longest-running environmental magazine, writes widely in the media in outlets including the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Ecologist, and has appeared on radio and TV. In 2009 he founded the Dark Mountain Project, an effort to bring together a new cultural and literary movement to respond honestly to the challenges of the coming century.
Paul’s first book, ONE NO, MANY YESES, an investigative journey through the anti-globalisation movement, was published in six languages in thirteen countries. His second book, REAL ENGLAND, was published in 2008. His debut poetry collection, KIDLAND, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. He is currently working on a novel.