Michael Peel

Is Britain the idyllic island we think it is? Financial Times foreign correspondent Michael Peel provides a fresh perspective in What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except the British): Home Truths From a Foreign Correspondent.

Join us in the bookshop as Michael digs into the national consciousness from an outside perspective, pulling apart the ways in which we have become unmoored from crucial truths about ourselves.

What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except The British)

How do you see Britain? That might depend on your point of view, and as long time British foreign correspondent, Michael Peel has come to understand, it can look very different from outside.

It's tempting to think of the UK as a fundamentally stable and successful nation. But events of the past few years, from Brexit to exposes of imperial history, have begun to spark fierce public debates about whether that is true. Is Britain, just a marginal northern European island nation, marked by injustices, corruption and with a bloody history of slavery, repression and looting? And yet UK politics, media, and public opinion live constantly in the shadow of old myths, Second World War era nostalgia, and a belief in supposedly core British values of tolerance, decency and fair play. British politicians regularly exploit a damaging complacency that holds that everything will turn out okay, because, in Britain, it always does.

In What Everyone Knows About Britain, Michael Peel argues that, from many perspectives, we are no different from other countries whose own national delusions have seen them succumb to abuses of power, increased poverty and divisive conflict.

The battle over Britain's narrative is the struggle for its future and its place in the world. So, how do we escape the trick mirror - and see ourselves as we really are?

About Michael Peel

Michael Peel first joined the Financial Times in 1997. Since then, he has been a foreign correspondent posted in West Africa, the Middle East, South-East Asia, and Europe. Peel's work has won awards, including from the UK Foreign Press Association and the US Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. He has also written for many other publications including the London Review of Books and TLS. He has appeared on the BBC, Sky and other broadcast media.

Venue Accessibility Information
More Information on Our Event Vouchers