England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

An electrifying, trenchant meditation on Englands pop sensibility, England Is Mine shows the novelist and critic Michael Bracewell on blistering form as he hops from Oscar Wilde to Paul Weller, Goldie to Graham Greene, in a dizzyingly erudite cultural history.

Bracewells eye is unswervingly democratic, as, for example, W. H. Auden (grandfather of the robot dandys) is to be found sitting next to David Bowie (a sort of Mod from Mars). He is also intensely funny: who was it that [covered] the territory of Angela Carters Company of Wolves in the guise of a pre-Raphaelite raised on Jackie Kate Bush, of course.

Through impassioned argument and an insight both hilarious and surgical (note Oasiss veneration of the Beatles as an example of Englands nostalgia for Englishness as a kind of heritage pop) England Is Mine offers a genuinely unique and, more importantly, cogent take on Englands pop history.

Author Bio

Michael Bracewell is the author of six novels and two works of non-fiction, including the much acclaimed England Is Mine. His writing has appeared in The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Fashion Writing and The Faber Book of Pop, and he has written catalogue texts for many contemporary artists, including Richard Wentworth, Jim Lambie and Gilbert amp;amp; George. He was the co-curator of 'The Secret Public: The Last Days of The British Underground, 1977-1988', at Kunstverein Munchen in 2006, and was a Turner Prize judge in 2007.