Yes We Have No : Adventures in the Other England

by Nik Cohn

Release Date: 21 September, 1999

Edition: Hardcover

Price:

More Info

Fun but unreliable view of England

I'm not sure how successful Cohn is at describing the 'real' England. The motley cast of characters he 'happens' upon are just as unrepresentative of England as Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep. But I guess a series of interviews with the real population of England - like anywhere else in the west: a collection of fairly nice but dull suburbanites - would not have made for a gripping read. And this is a gripping read - one of those books I couldn't put down.

But I am suspicious of the provenance of much of the text. I get the feeling that much of what people say in the book seem to be things Cohn would have liked them to say rather than the actual verbatium 'truth'. Fair enough I supose.

(By way of example, I come from Derry and I know for a fact no one but an imaginative journalist like Cohn could describe it in romantic terms!!)

Little New or Startling Here

Gotta say that my high hopes for this book sank further and further with every chapter I read. Rather than present the "Adventures in the Other England" that the subtitle promises, Cohn instead gives the reader transcriptions of conversation after conversation. Yes, he does have a knack for finding interesting people to talk to, but once he's done that, he seems content to record what they say and leave it at that. One thing he does try to stress is what a melting pot England has become since WWII and what a diverse array of lifestyles it now hosts. But unless you're completely unaware and still think Britain is nothing more than a country of cozy tea rooms and ye olde tradition, none of this is news. A far more enlightening (and depressing) book on the state of modern Britain is Nick Danziger's travelogue "Danziger's Britain."