Don't Look Back in Anger

The Rise and Fall of Cool Britannia

By: Daniel Rachel

Narrated by: Paul McGann, Louise Brealey, Tania Rodrigues, Jot Davies, David John, Dean Williamson, Shvorne Marks, Charles Armstrong

Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Read by Paul McGann, Louise Brealey, Tania Rodriguez, Shvorne Marks, Jot Davies, David John, Dean Williamson and Charles Armstrong. Introduced by Daniel Rachel, and featuring audio-exclusive extracts from Daniel's source interviews.  

The '90s was the decade when British culture reclaimed its position at the artistic centre of the world. Not since the 'Swinging Sixties' had art, comedy, fashion, film, football, literature and music interwoven into a blooming of national self-confidence. It was the decade of Lad Culture and Girl Power, of Blur vs Oasis. When fashion runways shone with British talent, Young British Artists became household names, football was 'coming home' and British film went worldwide. From Old Labour's defeat in 1992 through to New Labour's historic landslide in 1997, Don't Look Back in Anger chronicles the Cool Britannia age when the country united through a resurgence of patriotism and a celebration of all things British.    

But it was also an era of false promises and misplaced trust, when the weight of substance was based on the airlessness of branding, spin and the first stirrings of celebrity culture. A decade that started with hope then ended with the death of the 'people's princess' and 9/11 - an event that redefined a new world order.    

Through 67 voices that epitomise the decade - including Tony Blair, John Major, Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn, Tracey Emin, Keith Allen, Meera Syal, David Baddiel, Irvine Welsh and Steve Coogan - we relive the epic highs and crashing lows of one of the most eventful periods in British history. Today, in an age where identity dominates the national agenda, Don't Look Back in Anger is a necessary and compelling historical document.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Daniel Rachel (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group

Everyone came off as either deluded or liars

This is very much an oral history of Cool Britannia, so don’t expect too much critical analysis since the people interviewed clearly continue to have their own reasons for glossing over the more cynical aspects of the period. I’m not sure how to judge the audiobook, based on how the narrators interpreted the words of different interviewees, which ended up making the people sound very self-important for creating what sounded like a bunch of basic sketch comedy bits sold to a society crying out for something, anything, to latch on to and drag the country out of the doldrums. The whole ‘we were just reflecting what society wanted’ is such a worn trope by now that it’s hard not to roll my eyes every time it was trotted out, even when trying to keep everything in context, David Baddiel came off completely deluded, Perhaps the interviewees weren’t so earnest and were more self-aware, but you wouldn’t know it from this audiobook. The snippets of interview recordings didn’t really help.

By the end, you’d think everyone interviewed were ‘the good guys’, and everything they did was "just a bit of fun" that also happened to change the world. Spare me. It did make me dislike absolutely everyone in the book, so perhaps that’s a bit of public service. Perhaps that was the intention of the author, to have everyone be absolute pillocks on the record and have that be the rebuke and criticism of the era, but I'm not sure that was worth listening to for 18 hours.

Impossible to listen to at length

I should have researched this book more carefully before I bought the Audible version. It is simply a series of quotations from a highly selective 60 or so people who lived through and contributed to Cool Britannia, loosely structured under chapter headings. There was no factual account or summation of the period, no analysis and no real sense of narrative. There was the germ of a good idea for a book. If it had been 5 -10% quotations and 90-95% narrative and analysis I might have enjoyed it. As it is, I found it hugely irritating. The choice of those contributing was in itself narrow - plenty of movers and shakers and plenty of "cool" Britons but no-one else. No outside perspective. No sense of what people who simply lived through the period felt or experienced. Very disappointing.

An Insightful, introspective delve into GenX’s purple patch.

I knew Daniel a bit, (through a mutual friend) during the period which this book addresses

That’s an irrelevance, suffice to say that the reader/listener can be assured that the words here-in have been written and crafted by someone who is thoughtful, insightful, intelligent, considerate and most of all, authentic.

It’s clear, listening to the interview clips, that the interviewees feel at ease and disarmed when Daniel is coaxing them to recollect their past. I can’t imagine that was an easy thing to do when you consider some of the personalities contributing.

Naturally, it would be remiss not to cover some of the more hedonistic, narcissistic behaviour by some of the main protagonists at the time.

However, what I particularly liked about the book is the way that Daniel has succeed in steering clear of delving into the more salacious, tabloid’y events of the day & focused mainly on the impact (short, and long term) political, social and cultural changes the ‘Cool Britannia’ period had on the UK.

I’m not an author, journalist or scholar. I’m a blue-collar worker, but I’d imagine it would be quite easy, when writing a book with a title as conspicuous as this, to amble into a dumbed-down stroll along nostalgia lane. Daniel ensures at every turned page that this is avoided.

Keith Allen retrospectively sums up the period end nicely; “one step forward, twenty back”, but my favourite quote is from Daniel himself; “We are the shadows dancing through this story”.

I think that is a beautiful phrase which captures the concentric nature that ‘movements’ such as this one has on future generations.

The products of our past are the consequences of their future.

I hope you enjoy listening/reading this book as much as I did.

An exceptional book on an exceptional era.

Hilarious, rollicking, uproarious and debauched, this insightful and detailed book charts the trajectory of the music, fashion, artists and politicians that made Cool Brittania.

Each chapter ends with the original interview with one of the key offenders. Any bit with Noel Gallagher is worth listening to twice

Vivid and engaging, this refreshingly honest and detailed book is a must for anyone who lived thru the 90's or was unfortunate enough to miss them