Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality
Front cover of the 2010 edition
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| Author | Theodore Dalrymple |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Sentimentality |
| Genre | Cultural studies, polemics |
| Publisher | Gibson Square Books Ltd |
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Publication date
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29 July 2010 |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | |
Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality (subtitle in US editions: How Britain is Ruined by Its Children) is a non-fiction book by the British writer and retired doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, originally published in 2010. Polemical in nature, the book contends that sentimentality has become culturally entrenched in British society, with harmful consequences. The author uses a range of cultural, educational, political, media and literary issues—including falling standards in education, UK aid policies for African development, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and the work and life of Sylvia Plath—to illustrate what he sees as the danger of abandoning logic in favour of sentimentality, which he describes as "the progenitor, the godparent, the midwife of brutality". Much of Dalrymple's analysis is underpinned by his experience of working with criminals and the mentally ill.
Spoilt Rotten received a mostly favourable reception in the media. Dalrymple was praised for carrying out a thought-provoking and convincing analysis of a newly emerged cultural phenomenon which sees emotion substituted for reason. Some critics, however, accused the author of cynicism and misanthropic pessimism in his approach, and the historian Noel Malcolm claimed that Dalrymple had overreached in his analysis.
Before the book's publication, Dalrymple had alluded on a number of occasions in his writing to the issue of sentimentality in contemporary society.
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