The Observer - 25.08.2019

The Observer

Books 25.08.19 49

exempted group who needed to be

understood and recognised”.

Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn,

Brett Anderson and Jarvis Cocker

head a noisy chorus that also

includes a particularly trenchant

Tjinder Singh of Cornershop,

a candid Spice Girl Mel C (“we

hijacked the phrase [Girl Power]

from [the band] Shampoo”), and

the respective PRs who tried

to manage the images of Oasis

(Johnny Hopkins ) and Blur (Karen

Johnson ).

The whiteness of the Britpop era

can be blinding: Rachel

doesn’t forget that

Goodness Gracious Me,

Bhaji on the Beach and

Bend It Like Beckham

were part of the era’s

spectacular cultural remix.

He does, however, devote

needless pages to ball-by-ball

coverage of Euro ’96, and gives

Loaded and laddism an easy ride,

allowing the confraternity of

“men who should know better”

considerable airtime with only mild

challenges. The reality is darker:

their jokey normalisation of sexism

led inexorably to our routine

contemporary misogyny.

You could always gripe about

the absentees: Elastica’s Justine

Frischmann , who hugely infl uenced

the sensibilities of both Suede

and Blur, is missing, as is Piers

Morgan , the showbiz hack who

became editor of the Mirror when

the tabloids rebranded as purveyors

of celebrity gossip fi rst and news

second. Damien Hirst would have

been useful, but Tracey Emin and

Sarah Lucas are expert witnesses,

as is former Radio 1 controller

Matthew Bannister , Machiavellian

PR Matthew Freud and a guy from

the Football Association, all with

their war stories, their post-hoc

justifi cations and occasional bouts

of rueful mea culpa.

Oral histories are eminently

readable, allowing for dissent and

contrast. Rachel’s editorialising

is confi ned to an explanatory

introduction and his fairly blokeish

agenda-setting. He’s a mod, and

mates with Ocean Colour Scene , so

understands a key feature of the

era: the conscious act of detoxifying

the union jack, reclaiming it as the

fl ag fl own by the Jam and the Who

rather than the banner of racists,

something the Labour government

was equally keen to do.

But various media both here

and abroad seized on it as visual

short hand and soon, all subtlety was

lost. Cocker leads the charge of those

aghast at the orgiastic patriotism

that ensued; Irvine Welsh is similarly

scabrous. Perhaps the book’s greatest

irritation is its repeated attempts to

defi ne Cool Britannia, which leaves

everyone fl oundering or hand-

wringing. There was a confl uence

and a cross-pollination of many

creatives in a booming economy

under a helpful government. This

book is a timely reminder, though,

of exactly how much messaging,

perception and image counted – not

so different from the Instagram era

after all, perhaps.

To order Don’t Look Back in Anger

for £17.60 go to guardianbookshop.

com or call 0330 333 6846

With isolationism on the rise,

Sure Start children’s centres long

shuttered and the pound falling as

companies desert the UK, Daniel

Rachel’s oral history of the 90 s

looks back at a decade in which

the owner of an indie record label

could have the ear of government

and bring about real change. Alan

McGee , Creation Records boss and

discoverer of Oasis, helped persuade

a Labour administration to allow

musicians to keep claiming benefi ts

and get more targeted help with the

New Deal for Musicians in 1999, the

Don’t Look Back in Anger

Daniel Rachel

Orion, £20, pp528

An entertaining

oral history of cool

Britannia, featuring

fi gures such as Tony

Blair and Tracey Emin,

raises questions for

Kitty Empire

The decade of

lost dreams

Will

Jeroen Olyslaegers

Pushkin Press, £14.99, pp352

Th is urgent novel about a

policeman navigating the

darkness of German-occupied

Antwerp in the second world

war won a number of Dutch

literature prizes in 2017, and

David Colmer’s gripping

translation reveals why.

Written in fl ashback as Will

tells his story many years later,

it constantly grapples with

what the ordinary man might

do when faced with a horror

so huge that to resist might

threaten his very survival.

Olyslaegers bravely explores

moral compromise, betrayal and

collaboration - and throws our

polarised times into sharp relief.

The Wall

John Lanchester

Faber, £8.99, pp288

Th e Wall might not be the

most talked about dystopia

on this year’s Booker longlist

• that accolade goes to
  Margaret Atwood’s sequel
  to Th e Handmaid’s Tale - but
  it’s just as relevant. Kavanagh
  is on quasi-national service,
  standing guard on a giant cold
  concrete wall around the British
  coastline. Our introduction to
  him is Lanchester at his fi nest;
  clear-eyed, clever and funny.
  Th is early promise isn’t quite
  fulfi lled - the world doesn’t
  seem fully drawn, somehow


• but there’s still so much to
  ponder here, especially in the
  pitiless take-down of “the
  Olds” who messed up these
  young people’s lives with
  their decisions. Lanchester’s
  chilling world feels like a stark,
  exasperated warning.

How to Be a Dictator

Frank Dikötter

Bloomsbury, £25, pp304

Dutch historian Frank Dikötter

goes on a whistlestop tour of

infamous leaders of the 20th

century, from Mussolini to

Mengistu, stopping off at Hitler

and Stalin. Whether these pen

portraits off er new insight isn’t

the point; what Dikötter does

so well is to fi nd the pathological

and ideological connections

among leaders who “teetered

between hubris and paranoia”.

To order Will for £13.19, Th e

Wall for £7.91 or How to

Be a Dictator for £22 go to

guardianbookshop.com or call

0330 333 6846

In brief

by Ben East

More than a decade and a half

since The Last Party, Rachel’s

companion work differs from

Harris’s in key aspects. As well

as Blur and Blair, Rachel corrals

contributions from the worlds of

art, TV, books, fi lm and comedy,

drawing on the glass-tabletop-eye-

view of party organisers and junior

TV runners and fashion stylists, who

wax eloquent about the era’s clothes

and drug consumption.

Even if you are familiar with, say,

the Britpop saga, the machinations

that produced the Young British

Artists, the Turner prize and the Tate

Modern are illuminating. If you’re

in the habit of reading political

memoirs, the extent to which Labour

relied on Manchester United boss

Alex Ferguson for advice might be

revelatory. It’s always salutary to be

reminded of grotesques like Keith

Allen (“I used to climb out of the

Colony back window, come across

the roof to the Groucho, tap on the

ladies window, go in, have a line and

a fuck and go off into the club”) –

just one period fi gure over-enabled

by lad culture

The names are big. Tony Blair

and Alastair Campbell join half-a-

dozen Labour party voices, many

still spinning about spin, but

former Tory PM John Major and

former health secretary Virginia

Bottomley are here too, providing

context and counterweight: Britpop

actually happened on Major’s

watch. Unexpectedly, Bottomley

comes out to bat for Trainspotting ,

fi nding it “challenging and raw”

but communicating “a culture... an

Clockwise from top:

Tracey Emin, Noel

Gallager, Tony and

Cherie Blair, Mel C

of the Spice Girls.

better to brew the bottled lightning

that would power the nation into a

new millennium. The scheme ran

for a decade.

The long 90 s, bookended by the

second summer of love in 1988

and 9/11 in 2001, now seem very

distant indeed: relatively innocent

times, despite the Met Bar , before

austerity and Brexit, Instagram and

Cambridge Analytica. Can it really be

possible that before the 1997 Labour

government, the creative industries,

now so much a fi xture of the story

Britain tells about itself, weren’t even

included in GDP calculations? So

recount the former secretary of state

for culture, media and sport Chris

Smith and Waheed Alli , ennobled

at 33 for services to TV. (Lord Alli

co-founded the company that

became Planet 24 , which produced

The Big Breakfast and The Word.)

We have, of course, been here

before. Guardian journalist John

Harris wrote the defi nitive word

on Britpop, New Labour and cool

Britannia in The Last Party (2003).

Harris’s analysis of the era gets a

cameo in the discussion about when

exactly Britpop started to pall.

Popular culture

Noel Gallag

Brett Anderso

head a noisy c

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Tjinder Singh

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