As in his highly acclaimed Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices to drive his narrative of 1950s Britain. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as austerity and rationing gradually give way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. These and many other voices give a rich, unsentimental picture of everyday life in the 1950s. Well-known figures are encountered on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals) and Tiger's Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester). All this is part of a colourful, unfolding tapestry, in which the great national events - the Tories returning to power, the death of George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis - jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavour: Butlin's holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers, Hancock's Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston's Family Britain offers an unrivalled take on a largely cohesive, ordered, still very hierarchical society gratefully starting to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s towards domestic ease and affluence.
For Potter, Forster and Bragg, as also for Ian McKellen, Trevor Nunn, Tom Courtenay, Alan Plater, Alan Bennett, ... hill 'not long after I'd enjoyed two helpings of treacle pudding and custard on the second sitting for school dinner'.
... R., 164 Nicholls, Audrey, 94 Nicholls, Dandy, 199 Nichols, Joy, 307, 583 Nicolson, (Sir) Harold: on victory celebrations, 6–7; on class resentment, 55; on Harold Wilson, 81; and convertibility crisis, 226; reluctant socialism, 227; ...
First published in 1976. This book covers working-class history from the decline of Chartism to the formation of the Labour Party and its early development to 1914.
Continuing his groundbreaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents a breathtaking portrait of our nation through eyewitness accounts, newspapers of the time and previously unpublished diaries. Drawing on the everyday...
John Rae's invaluable diaries give a couple of revealing glimpses. In 1973 he discussed the issue with Shirley Williams (who later in the decade would preside over the end of the direct grants). 'Says she is in favour of a state system ...
The first book in the groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, A World to Build transports us effortlessly back to 1945.
Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit presents a history of the two avant-garde groups that French filmmaker and subversive strategist Guy Debord founded and led: the Lettrist International (1952-1957) and ...
'This is Kynaston at his best ... A rich and vivid picture of a nation in all its human complexity' IAN JACK 'A compulsive read ... Generous as well as...
The 'Square Mile', London's financial powerhouse, rose to prominence with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. David Kynaston's vibrant history brings this world to life, taking us from the railway...
This book is about the artifacts that are left us all these years later (letters, speeches and particularly pictures) — things that LIFE can show that allow us to know this man more intimately.