Archive of The Enchanted Glass

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.

Brexit has thrown the British state into crisis. This week's defeat for Theresa May's proposed deal was the single biggest by a sitting government in the modern era. As Tom Nairn writes, "only a few years ago, the break-up of Britain was almost inconceivable". Not so much anymore. However, these words weren't written in 2019, but 1977. In this, the return of Verso's Weekend Reads, we republish Tom Nairn classic account of the nature, and the twilight, of the British state.