Four stars in The Telegraph and – phew – they’ve called off the men in the white coats …

four stars for the paperback in The Sunday Telegraph: “Half the people in this country, says Cole Moreton, believe in a Higher Power but seem to deny themselves any formal means of worshipping such a power. That rather (to me) curious contradiction is examined in sprightly prose in this book, whose author shows a sharp eye for all manner of oddballs. The title is from Bernard Shaw’s remark about the English belief that God was one of us. I liked Moreton’s coldly accurate accunt of the death of Princess Diana.”

Thank you very much, Nicholas Bagnall. You can find out if he’s right by clicking here to order a copy. 

Phew. I think that means The Sunday Telegraph has called off the men in the white coats. When John Preston reviewed the hardback last year he said: ”There were times during this book when I thought it was one of the most perceptive and original studies of the English that I’ve read in ages.” I was with him all the way at that point, as you might imagine. Thinking about tracking him down, buying him a pint and offering to be his new best friend. But he went on. “Yet there were other times when I was equally convinced I was reading the work of a major loon.”

All he meant, as it turned out, was that he didn’t agree with bits of it. And only bits. ”His analysis – for the most part – is leavened by humour, acuity and fluency. However, it’s when he speculates as to where the English soul might be going next that he crosses the line from the estimable to the quite possibly sectionable.”

Dubious language, I thought, in an otherwise entertaining review. But now I can safely go down to the Telegraph’s Ways With Words festival at Dartington on 15 July without fear of the paper’s in-house crack team of interventionist psychotherapists grabbing me by both arms, all of a sudden. So that’s nice.

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