Memoirs of a Survivor

Christie plays the diarist of Doris Lessing's novel, surviving in a not-too-distant future Britain resembling nothing so much as the landscape of Derek Jarman's 'Jubilee'. The depressing picture carefully detailed by Gladwell of a nation spiritually, politically and economically bankrupt - Thatcher's Britain, in fact - is one in which people queue in the streets for water rations, the corner newsvendor with no papers to sell speaks the news to impassive listeners, horses and dogs are set upon for food, packs of wild children huddle in the underground. Through all this Christie wanders with the comfort of her fantasies, too familiar by half to arthouse regulars.