Books: Three From Britain

Britain is a puzzle. The Princess bows to the Archbishop-but the churches are empty, and religion is in evident decline. Britain is the U.S.’s strongest ally against Communism-and yet many Britons still look on the Communist conspiracy as if it were largely a fiction of American “hysteria.” Britain continues to embody the kind and courageous middle-class virtues -and yet a social landslide has brought to some a nagging despair, to others a kind of fatigued boredom.

Three new British books (see below) should tell Americans much of the drama that lies behind the puzzle. In different moods they deal with three major themes: 1) the treasonable folly of the intellectuals who, in the ‘303, took up Marxism as something between fad and faith; 2) the ugly betrayals and discontents that grew out of this era’s dry rot; and 3) a crisis of faith deeper than either of these troubles-the struggle of an age estranged from God trying to find a way back to religion.

Each book tells an absorbing story. Together, they tell much about Britain today.