An early novel by Rose Macaulay about a government program of compulsory selective breeding in a dystopian future England.

In a near-future England, a new government entity—the Ministry of Brains—attempts to stave off idiocracy through a program of compulsory selective breeding. Kitty Grammont, who shares author Rose Macaulay’s own ambivalent attitude, gets involved in the Ministry’s propaganda efforts, which the novel details with an entertaining thoroughness. (The alphabetical caste system dreamed up by Macaulay for her nightmare world would directly influence Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopia Brave New World.) But when Kitty falls in love with the Minister for Brains, a man whose genetic shortcomings make a union with her impossible, their illicit affair threatens to topple the government. Because it ridiculed wartime bureaucracy, the planned 1918 publication of What Not was delayed until after the end of World War I.

"A government ministry decides to increase national brain-power, and stave off the coming idiocracy, through a program of compulsory selective breeding. The propaganda efforts in support of this endeavor are amazing. The book ends on an ambiguous note: Is the victory of "human perverseness, human stupidity, human self-will" over autocratic bureaucracy a triumph? Or not? Macaulay - a beloved British writer best known for The Towers of Trebizond - worked in the British Propaganda Dept. during WWI. When British censors discovered that What Not ridiculed wartime bureaucracy, its 1918 publication was stopped. An influence on Huxley's "Brave New World.""--