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Failures of State
- The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
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Failures of State
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Summary
The Sunday Times best seller
A Guardian and Sunday Times Book of the Year
The inside story of the UK’s response to the pandemic from the Insight investigations unit at The Sunday Times.
Failures of State recounts the extraordinary political decisions taken at the heart of Boris Johnson’s government during the global pandemic.
Fully updated and corroborated by hundreds of sources, this is the insider’s account of how the government sleepwalked into disaster and tried to cover up its role in the tragedy. Thrillingly told, it exposes one of the most scandalous failures of political leadership in British history.
Critic reviews
"A devastating new account of Year COVID exposes the prime minister’s utter failure to meet the nation’s greatest health crisis for a century." (Paul Routledge, Daily Mirror)
"Incredibly reported and wildly damning.... It is impossible to read Failures of State, the frequently jaw-dropping book by Sunday Times journalists Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott, and not conclude that the British people deserved far, far better from the government,." (Marina Hyde, Guardian)
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What listeners say about Failures of State
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- JJ-Bakrim
- 25-05-23
Wonderfully incisive and utterly damning
Clear, comprehensive and absolutely damning indictment of this government’s incompetence and malign wilfulness when failing to handle the ongoing pandemic.
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- Mr. Cja Carr
- 29-08-22
Absolutely mind blowing
I had heard and read a lot of things that the British government did wrong in relation to covid. In preparing for any kind of pandemic, in failing to listen to expert advice, in how they responded to the problem and in how they cynically exploited it for their own gains.
But nothing could prepare me for some of the revelations in this book.
If you are labouring under the belief that the government did its best, listen to this and be thoroughly disabused of that view!
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- Alices daughter
- 29-12-22
Excellent chronicle of events
Extremely well written account of the complete and utter incompetence of the government and particularly of the clown of a prime minister at the time. Frightening to hear of some of their decisions that were glossed over at the time and I think the audiobook is better than the hardcopy in this instance.
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- Chris N.
- 04-08-22
Exceptionally well articulated decimation of .....
Thegovernment's mishandling ofthe Coronavirus crisis - Boris Johnson's culpability revealed as close to that of a criminal.
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- elzG40
- 03-10-22
Shocking!
A damning indictment of a government that showed nothing but arrogance, incompetence and a shocking contemptuous of the British people.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-11-23
Exceptional and forensic look at utter the utter failure of the covid government
Reliving this wasn’t easy, but it was a vital read. It’s an incredibly detailed account, but presented in a very accessible way. Thank you.
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