- Hardcover: 1 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury UK; 1 edition (July 15 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0747579857
- ISBN-13: 978-0747579854
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 6.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #253,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Kynaston (author of the four-volume The City of London) has produced an extraordinary panorama of Britain as it emerged from the tumult of war with a broken empire, a bankrupt economy and an ostensibly socialist government. Britain between 1945 and 1951 is an alien place. No washing machines, no highways, no supermarkets. Everything was heavy, from coins and suitcases to coats and shoes. Everything edible was rationed: tea, meat, butter, cheese, jam, eggs, candy. The awfulness of 1939–1945 still lingered, and any conversation tended to drift toward the war, like an animal licking a sore place. Yet, people assumed Britain was still best: that was so deeply part of how citizens thought, it was taken for granted. By combining astute political analysis with illustrative anecdotes brilliantly chosen from contemporary newspapers, popular culture and memoirs, Kynaston succeeds in recreating the lost world of austerity. The volume represents social history at its finest, and readers may look forward to its promised sequels taking the story of Britain up to 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher. 20 b&w photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Review
'This is a classic; buy at least three copies - one for yourself and two to give to friends and family' John Charmley, Guardian 'When complete, Kynaston's skill in mixing eyewitness accounts and political analysis will surely be one of the greatest and most enduring publishing ventures for generations' Brian Thompson, Observer 'Austerity Britain is a cracking read' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Redistributionism in Postwar Britain,
By
This review is from: Austerity Britain; 1945-1951 (Hardcover)
In this ambitious narrative, British Historian David Kynaston attempts to reconstruct the lives of Britons after the end of WWII. In many ways, life after the war was just as hard maybe harder than it was during the war. There were some celebrations, but mostly a somber realization of what lay ahead.Much of Kynaston's book is focused on the newly elected Labour government under Clement Atlee and their attempts to introduce and implement the welfare state, the beginnings of democratic socialism and the debates over nationalization of public services. The largest and most significant of course being the creation of the National Health Service. Kynaston also describes the many high-modernist urban projects to modernize the cities and suburbanize. The book is written in the traditional historical narrative and at over 600 pages, the book is a rather long read. I think that some of detail could have been paired down for the casual reader, but considering this is part of an anthology series, it is perfectly suitable for that purpose. Overall, I recommend the book for anyone who wants a detailed social history of England in the immediate postwar period.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Austerity Britain 1945-1951,
By
This review is from: Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Hardcover)
This book took me back in time! It opened up my own 'Pandora's Box' and gave me the understanding of why I think the way I do about many issues. I was born in 1946 so assimilated the ideas, views and feelings of this time period without realizing how or why. Now I understand where many of my parent's viewpoints came from!It had the added interest of including parts of a dear, school friend's mother's diary!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well researched, less well-written.,
By C. J. Thompson "Arctic John" (Pond Inlet, Nunavut Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Austerity Britain 1945 To 1951 (Paperback)
Before purchasing this book, I actually bought and read Austerity Britain: Smoke In The Valley by the same author. I didn't know at the time of the recent purchase that 'Smoke in the Valley' is actually a stand-alone publication of the second half of 'Austerity Britain 1945-51'. Prospective purchasers of either should be aware of this fact.All in all, I derived some enjoyment from this book because of my interest in the time period. However, I did not feel able to award more than three stars because of a couple of serious criticisms: Firstly (and I admit this is a matter of personal taste), I thought the focus on the politics of the period was given too much emphasis over other aspects of social life. Secondly, and far more importantly, the structure and organization of this fairly lengthy work is abominable. In any give chapter, the author will speak of some particular general topic (such as rationing) and then, within a paragraph or so, suddenly switch to something like the divorce rate in a specified year, and then, just as suddenly and haphazardly, go onto something just as radically different. These same topics will then get visited and re-visited dozens of times (the order of change from one to the other differing from chapter to chapter) without any sort of logical linkage. I might have enjoyed this work very much had not the disorganization made reading it so very laborious to plod through.
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