The Scotsman has published an extract from the new edition of The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy, the acclaimed dissection of Britain's relationship with its monarchy, by the foremost historian of nationalism Tom Nairn. In the extract, Nairn discusses the idea of a "Republican Monarchy":

The term appears self-contradictory, and yet nothing else corresponds to what may be emerging right now, following the decisive SNP victory in the Scottish Parliamentary election. There will be a referendum on Scottish independence quite soon, and Premier Alex Salmond has repeatedly made it clear he does not want outright republicanism to be part of the bid. The future envisaged is therefore one of statehood equality over the former United Kingdom, in which a crowned head of state will remain, as the symbol of partnership and good will, established social and personal relations, and the historic closeness derived from 1688. It should also change and probably moderate the "surrogacy" mentioned earlier, through which English national identity has been transmuted into an adulatory obsession with royalty. One way the English have avoided "little England" (the country on its own) has been the curiously amplified elevation of a regal family dynasty described in this book, informally shared by the peripheral countries. A formal agreement between the periphery and the core-majority, by contrast, could include the acceptance of monarchy in a spirit different from what has so far prevailed. In effect, the replacement of "enchantment" and emotionality by a straightforward calculation of joint benefits and their costs.

Visit the Scotsman to read the extract in full.

By Leo Goretti / 09 December 2011 / post comment

As the year draws to a close, newspapers have been asking the great and the good which books have most impressed them in 2011. Here we have collected the Verso books that were featured.

In the New Statesman, Guardian and Observer Books of the Year round ups, Hari Kunzru selected two Verso books as standing out from other books published this year. He explained the appeal of the titles to the New Statesman:

Hari Kunzru 

 With the Occupy movement gaining ground throughout the world,  McKenzie Wark's smart overview of the situationist movement, The Beach Beneath the Street: the Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International, feels particularly timely. For years, Laura Oldfield Ford, who is very influenced by situationism, has produced a fanzine, based on her derives around London, with words and beautiful, confrontational line drawings of the city's forgotten people and neglected places. Now, Savage Messiah has been collected in book form. It is a wake-up call to anyone who can only see modern cities through the lens of gentrification.

In the Guardian feature on the Best Books of 2011, a number of Verso titles were selected by those asked.

Eric Hobsbawm

Among the 2011 books that came my way I particularly welcomed Owen Jones's Chavs, a passionate and well-documented denunciation of the upper-class contempt for the proles that has recently become so visible in the British class system.

John Lanchester

I loved two very different books of criticism...[one was] Owen Hatherley's furiously pro-Modernist A Guide to the New Ruins of Britain

Pankaj Mishra

Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo stimulatingly uncovers the contradictions of an ideology that is much too self-righteously invoked.

Ahdaf Soueif

I'm reading Chris Harman's A People's History of the World. It's really helpful to zoom out from time to time when you're living massive events at very close quarters.

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By Kishani Widyaratna / 09 December 2011 / post comment