What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works, the distinguished historian A. G. Hopkins offers an explanation, tracing Britain鈥檚 current problems to decisions made in the 1980s that abandoned its postwar experiment in social democracy and mimicked policies of deregulation and privatisation promoted by the United States.
A. G. Hopkins is the Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of American Empire: A Global History, Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851鈥�1931, (both 快色直播), An Economic History of West Africa, and (with P. J. Cain) British Imperialism, 1688鈥�2015.