The paperback arrives!

This week, the small format paperback of Real England is published. It looks great, and if you don't own the book already, there is really no excuse now. Not least because it's half the price it was before.

And if you still need persuading, maybe today's excellent review in the Guardian will make your mind up. It certainly made my day. How's about this for an opening paragraph:

I occasionally say of a book that it is important, and that everyone should read it; this time I say so more emphatically than ever. I would like Gordon Brown to be strapped into a chair and have it read to him. And not let out of it again until he has given Paul Kingsnorth a powerful position in government.

Can't see this happening, I must say, and I think it would be a pretty suicidal career move anyway (though I wouldn't say no to the allowances.) But it's the thought that counts. And this thought is even better:

Kingsnorth follows in the tradition of Cobbett (who first identified the crushing of the spirit of place by the impersonal and often corrupt rapaciousness of the profit motive as "the Thing") and Orwell, united by a love of ordinary humanity.

I shouldn't be boasting really (it's not very English) but I've waited fifteen years to be compared, even fleetingly, to Orwell, and it probably won't happen again. So what the hell.