I’m out - why I’m done with books about Brexit

I hugely enjoyed Tim Shipman’s first two books about Brexit.

All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class, published in November 2016, was followed in 2017 by Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem.

Now, seven years on, Shipman has published a third volume (No Way Out: Brexit: From the Backstop to Boris), with a fourth and final book (Out: How Brexit Got Done & Four Prime Ministers Were Undone) scheduled for July.

The first two titles were incredibly well researched, and written with a lightness of touch that belied the complexity of the events the author was describing.

Naturally, therefore, I bought the latest instalment but when I sat down this week to read it something strange happened.

I began with the introduction, followed by the acknowledgments, but when I was glancing through the ‘timeline’ - a long list of Brexit-related events from June 23, 2016, the date of the referendum, to July 24, 2019, when Boris became prime minister - I realised I couldn’t go on.

Truth is, I am no longer interested in every last detail of how Britain finally escaped the clutches of the European Union, if indeed we have.

I’m glad the country voted as it did and although things have not gone as smoothly as one might have wished, I don’t regret for one second voting to leave.

Nevertheless I no longer want to read about it. It’s time to move on and make the very best of the situation we find ourselves in. (Whether our current political class is able to do so is another matter.)

Like the first two books, I’m certain that volumes three and four of Tim Shipman’s Brexit quartet will be immensely useful for students and historians in the future.

But me (to paraphrase Lou Reed), I just don’t care at all.