Publisher's Synopsis
Nicholas Faith examines how Britain has developed economically, culturally and socially in the past 50 years in changes that amount to a revolution - albeit one in which the Queen herself has never participated. Most of all, he considers the fatal flaw of exclusiveness that has permeated all classes of British society, causing long-term loss and damage. The "outsiders" whose talents were ignored by the establishment; the trade unions who restricted their membership and helped to destroy their own industries; the wasteful and destructive cult of the "amateur" - all this forms a story of wasted human potential and social divisions which, ironically, only began to break down under Mrs Thatcher's revolutionary regime.;In this book, the social, financial and personal effects of these restrictions, and the rise of the outsider in British society, symbolized by the changes in the Royal Family, are pulled together to form a picture of a nation's development.
