"A book that is by turns engrossing and infuriating - a response to Brexit in mechanical form" -- Evening Standard "A book about that moment between the end of the Second World War and Suez, when there was early nuclear power, the first computers, jet engines, fast fighter planes and big ships - all made here. Now Britain imports more than it exports. What went wrong?" -- i Newspaper "He writes beautifully" -- Literary Review "Exquisitely written and ripe with detail, [James Hamilton-Paterson] explores one disaster story after another" -- Sunday Times "Engaging book. He knows his British stuff'" -- The Times "Hamilton-Paterson, still one of England's most skilled and alluring prose writers in or out of fiction, has done something even more original. With imaginative scenes enacting 'what we have lost', he combines closely researched and detailed accounts of the decay of one legendary British product after another. Cars, motorbikes, shipbuilding and the nuclear industry are all there" -- London Review of Books "Definitely a book for those questioning how Great Britain lost its greatness. Written lyrically enough to interest the general reader'" -- Guardian "Chapters on cars, ships and motorbikes tell a melancholy story, though Hamilton-Paterson, also a distinguished novelist, can't resist glints of dark humour" -- Daily Mail "James Hamilton-Paterson mourns our nation's industrial decline in a deeply personal polemic" -- International Express.