Also writing in "The Spectator", Peregrine Worsthorne was more circumspect: "after eloquently telling the tale of how successive British parliamentary governments, Tory as much as Labour, have 'abolished' old Britain, Hitchens reaches the wholly illogical conclusion that that same British democracy alone is quite capable of putting the clock back". He also stated that Hitchens was wrong to hold Eurosceptic views. Alan Cowell, in a mostly critical review in "The New York Times", stated "in the 1950s and 60s, Britain was a gentler, more deferential place; the churches were better attended; children did give up their bus seats to adults; and a generation was nurtured on a history of wartime victory and imperial grandeur that had yet to be derided as myth or oppression". However, Cowell questioned the "Canute-like subtext" of the book that "the destructive forces of television, McDonald's and American popular culture could have been held back". In "The Weekly Standard", another US publication, Jonathan Foreman wrote that "at its best this book combines superb reporting (especially about the hijacking of education by frustrated leftists) with a heartbreaking analysis of one of the strangest revolutions in history. And in many ways it is the most important of the torrent of books that have dealt with the crisis of British identity". However, Foreman added that the book suffered from "cranky fogeyism", and he was particularly critical of both the chapter analysing the Chatterley trial and the premise that satirical television and radio programmes of the late 1950s and early 1960s contributed towards destroying British national unity. The book was first published in Britain by Quartet Books in 1999 (), and then in a revised edition the following year. The volume was published in North America by Encounter Books in 2000 (). It was reissued in the UK by Continuum in 2008, with a new introduction by the author (). The book is subtitled "From Lady Chatterley to Tony Blair" in its British editions and "From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana" in its US editions. The book was reissued with the altered subtitle "From Winston Churchill to Theresa May" in August 2018 by Bloomsbury Continuum, with a new afterword by the author ().