BOOK

Look At Me - Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain is published by the Social Affairs Unit in May 2008.

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