Real America?

Apologies for the slight blogging lull. My book tour began last night with a very successful evening in Oxford and there's another event tomorrow in London. This, plus writing plenty of related articles, plus the fact that I'm going on holiday next week, is leaving little time for anything else.

In the next couple of days, though, I'll be reporting here on some of the new stories I've heard about since my extracts started appearing and the book started to sell. I've been contacted by people from all over the country with stories of their own local battles to save their own little slices of the real England. I plan to mention these up here as they come in, as well as add them to the permanent list of links on this site. With any luck it can become something of a directory of the many battles to save the local, the particular and the diverse all over England.

Speaking of which, I was today sent a link to this fascinating website, which charts and beautifully illustrates a process of spectacular decline in Detroit, in the US, where a decades-long economic collapse is razing the city's character on a heartbreaking scale. It puts what's happening to England in a wider context and is well worth a look just to marvel at some of the architecture.

Anyway - more very soon when I get some of my head back. In the meantime, I'm told that the Guardian and the Times will both be reviewing the book this Saturday. This is the one part of the creative process that the author really has no control over. Pray for me ...