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...