Martin Amis’s England: a baffling highly subjective take on the nation through the eyes of an expat

A documentary made for French TV by a writer entirely out of touch with modern Britain – and it showed. This stereotyped land of stiff-upper-lip repression just made Amis sound stupid.

By Rachel Cooke

(Photo By Land that time forgot: Martin Amisâ?T England. (Photo: BBC/Les Films dâ?TIci 2/Mark Kidel))

Martin Amis’s England
BBC4

So far, responses to Martin Amis’s England (Sunday, 9pm) have ranged from mild bafflement (a minority) to tinny outrage (the majority). I’m in the baffled camp – mostly, I think, because I don’t really have it in me to be truly angry at the author of Money (or Experience, which I regard, controversially, as his best book). Yes, he says dumb things these days. Yes, he’s starting to sound a bit like his pater. But he’s also clinging to his reputation as if to a lifebelt and I can only feel tenderly about that. Piled between hard covers, his marvellous sentences no longer convince and he knows it.