Family Britain, 1951-1957
Family Britain continues David Kynaston’s groundbreaking series, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. As in his highly acclaimed Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and...
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Family Britain continues David Kynaston’s groundbreaking series, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. 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 rationing gradually gives 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. 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 comic-strip hero Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester). In this colorful, unfolding tapestry, great national events—the Tories’ return 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 flavor: Butlin’s holiday camps, Hancock’s Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle, and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston’s Family Britain offers an unrivaled take on British society as it started to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s toward domestic ease and affluence.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780802717979 (0802717977)
ASIN: 802717977
Publish date: December 22nd 2009
Publisher: Walker & Company
Pages no: 784
Edition language: English
Series: Tales of a New Jerusalem (#2)
In the early 1950s Great Britain was a nation in transition. On the one hand it was still an imperial power, a workshop to much of the world, a land with a tradition-bound patriarchal society. Yet at the same time it was seeing the first results of the many social and economic changes underway, with...
Dominic West reads from David Kynaston's vivid and intimate history of Britain in the 1950s, drawing on the letters, diaries and memories of well-known and ordinary people.The Festival of Britain heralds the beginning of the end of austerity.Abridged by Jane Greenwood.Broadcast on:BBC Radio 4, 9:45a...
Delighted I will receive this as a "First Reads."Received it 12-14-09. Unfortunately am not likely to start it before the new year. I have too many books checked out from the library at the moment!It's a browsing book for me. Fascinating, but not "readable."