In the Room Where It Happened – James Allan

John O’Sullivan has been a leading conservative intellectual for more than four decades .

He was Margaret Thatcher 's speechwriter for a time and edited National Review for almost a decade .

O'Sullivan 's book Sleepwalking into Wokeness: How We Got Here is a collection of his essays on public affairs dating from 1985 to 2023 .

O’Sullivan traces out how the attack on national sovereignty proceeds.

He shows how difficult it can be (especially outside the United States ) to stand up to international law.

O'Sullivan sees today ’s political battles revolving around differing manifestations of illiberal democracy on the one side.

Indeed, it is variants of the latter sort of utopian thinking that have played a big part in giving us the revolution of “Wokeness” that currently assaults us and whose tenets and effects this book dissects and argues against in such an insightful yet entertaining way. I recommend the book wholeheartedly..