Archive of The Enchanted Glass

Tom Nairn, who died on Saturday morning, 21st January 2023, made his name with a series of coruscating essays on the British state published in New Left Review and collected in the 1977 book The Break-Up of Britain.  Here, we republish Tom Nairn's classic account of the nature, and the twilight, of the British state.

The toast of Tory and Labour leaders alike, the British Monarchy offers eloquent testimony to the persistence of the country’s Old Regime. These excerpts from Tom Nairn’s The Enchanted Glass, first published during the cultural reaction of the Thatcher years, offer a republican antidote to Jubilee kitsch and state-sponsored sycophancy.