BOOKS

Private Views: Voices from the Frontline of British Culture

A gathering global financial storm, a historic presidential campaign in the US - and some unpleasantness on Radio 2. These were just a few of the events which unfolded in the background while the interviews for Private Views - the first book to be produced by the New Culture Forum - were underway.

The aim of these conversations was to produce a picture of the issues, trends and preoccupations that currently shape our culture - from the effects of multiculturalism in arts policy to the cult of celebrity; from the existence of a cultural and political class to the question of bias at the BBC; and from the difficulties of talking about immigration to the prospects for freedom of expression itself in the face of radical Islam.

The one thing that unites the interviewees, from the novelist Lionel Shriver to the critic Cosmo Landesman, from the playwright Richard Bean to the designer Vivienne Westwood is that all of them are creators or practitioners in their particular field. And all of them, in their different ways, offer valuable insights into the cultural state we're in.

Look At Me - Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain

This polemic explores the ways in which Britain's culture has succumbed to the all-pervasive need for individial self-glorification in all its forms, from the pursuit of fame for fame's sake to the need many have to impose themselves on the simplest public situation.

It looks for the reasons for the rise of unbridled self-belief, and asks whether our social and communal identity is in danger of being damaged.

The book is available for purchase from Amazon.

'Insightful... Peter Whittle pinpoints one of the most conspicuous but shallowly perceived phenomena of our times.... What he has grasped, however, is that modern celebrity is not characterised, as it was in previous times, by the idea of 'them and us', the sense of a curtain being lifted on a world ordinary people don't share and which draws its glamour precisely from its inaccessibility. On the contrary, the current obsession with fame actually represents a deeply narcissistic obsession with the self. Melanie Phillips, in the Literary Review

'...this phenomenon is brilliantly anatomised by writer Peter Whittle in his new book.' James Delingpole, in The Sunday Telegraph

'... a timely, brief and very readable tract for our times by the formidable British cultural warrior Peter Whittle.' Ruth Dudley Edwards, in The Irish Independent

'Excellent.' Richard Bean, playwright

'Peter Whttle's new book is a devastating critique of modern self-obsession, and of the call of empty fame. Read it.' Alex Deane, author, The Great Abdication

'There is much intellectual meat in this short book...Look At Me is the best kind of polemic: one that holds up a harsh mirror to the distinctive grotesqueries of our time.' Jenny McCartney, Sunday Telegraph