Where is the new spiritual center of Britain? A shopping complex. “Shopping — in the sense of the ceaseless search for the next object that will thrill for a moment and satisfy for a minute — is the main interest of people without purpose. The problem with the British is that they are not even very good at shopping, just as they are not very good at their other passion, football, to judge by the results. For to be good at shopping requires discrimination, which itself requires some mental cultivation. And it is precisely the lack of this that makes British shops (on the whole — of course, there are exceptions) so deeply dispiriting.”