The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America
By Andrew O’Hagan
Faber £20, 384 pages
FT bookshop price: £16

Andrew O’Hagan observes in this collection of his own essays on Britain and America that “These are tough times for elitists.” He goes on: “Display will always win out over privacy, as if seriousness was boring, as if contemplation was excluding, as if understatement was underhand, and as if difficulty represented a kind of dishonesty.”