The Establishment

One thinks immediately of all the dreary little snobberies, the triviality, the emptiness, the susceptibility to stupid vogues.  How drab and provincial we have become!  How enslaved to gimmicks!  English inventiveness and energy, which used to be an example to the world - have they dried up altogether, or is it simply a bad period we are going through?

The two great inventions of the English, their political system and their literature, both seem at the moment rather dwindled and shabby.  The parliamentary two-party system has become, whether temporarily or forever, a mere contest between public relation outfits, with professional ad men in the back room.

- John Wain, 'The Month', Twentieth Century, July 1959