Short Book Reviews: Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) and Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951)

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews. 1. Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) Paul May’s cover for the 1969 edition 2.5/5 (Bad) After reading a monograph on the history of science fiction I inevitably find a handful of works that I must track down (more as an act of data collection than a quest for literary genius). Andrew Hammond’s Cold War Stories: British Dystopian Fiction, 1945-1990 (2017) contained a wealth of lesser-known works that immediately dented my pocketbook.1 Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) fits into Hammond’s analysis of a British Empire irrevocably weakened by the Cold War. Toynbee’s novel, an in even more severe terms Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951) discussed below, with its focus on a handful…