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'A wonderfully illuminating picture of the way we were' The Times 'The book is a marvel ... the fullest, deepest and most balanced history of our times' Sunday Telegraph 'Multi-layered, embroidered with great richness of detail ... Austerity Britain kicks off a series that will end in 1979. What a treat we have in store' Craig Brown's Book of the Week, Mail on Sunday 'There can be no doubt that this book is both a history and a triumphant work of art ... unputdownable' Observer
Product Description
David Kynaston's "Austerity Britain 1945-51", the first book in his series "Tales of a New Jerusalem", was a major "Sunday Times" bestseller in 2007. Here is the first volume from this landmark book covering 1945-48. Beginning his groundbreaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents our nation through the eyes of those who lived there. Meet Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, struggling daily with food rationing; Henry St. John, a self-serving civil servant in Bristol; and, the young Glenda Jackson, taking her 11-plus. Using mass observation, diaries, letters, newspapers and magazines from the time, "A World to Build" is an unsurpassed social history: intensely evocative to those who were there and eye-opening for their children and grandchildren.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Pointless if you're going to buy 'Austerity Britain 1945-51' because it's the first half of that book.
Tip: ignore any 'frequently bought with' recommendations.
Tip: ignore any 'frequently bought with' recommendations.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you were poor and honest, life in Britain in 1947 meant you were cold and hungry. Rationing allowed bare existence, heat and light failed, jobs were scarce, millions of homes were wanting. Nothing worked properly. If you had money, or office, you could get more, but it was a constant degrading struggle. Underneath was the awareness that the war was won, but that there were no rewards for peace. Kynaston with his extracts from Mass Observation brings it all out as if we were living it, and it is a dreadful picture. Labour was elected to create a new world, but quickly lost its way in the sheer inadequacy of means and leadership. Read about shortages, whale meat, icy cold and then floods, bread rationing, and misery, and imagine how you might have coped. Somehow, they did, and that comes through too.
These books of Kynaston should be required reading for political and economic education, and to realise why 60 years later Britain is still in some ways living with the postwar scars upon society and attitudes.
These books of Kynaston should be required reading for political and economic education, and to realise why 60 years later Britain is still in some ways living with the postwar scars upon society and attitudes.
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had high expectations for this book. The concept sounded great and the publicity had been very favourable. But a couple of chapters in I began to feel disappointed, and then angry and frustrated. Kynaston uses his source material in a shamelessly partisan fashion. Nothing unusual about that for a historian, perhaps, but here the narrative is so one-sided as to subtract almost all credibility from the text. It's fine for him to believe the post-war Labour government actually did the country more harm than good...but for him to imply (on the basis of very limited surveys and testimonies) almost the entire population felt the same way is preposterous. Reading this book you'd think most of the UK were ignorant, backward whingers who hated all politicians. Saying that, he doesn't even attempt to represent the whole of the UK, despite the 'Austerity Britain' title. Northern Ireland isn't mentioned once. Scotland is confined to a few pages about Glasgow. There's a south east/midlands bias which is really unsubtle. Certain passages are useful from a purely empirical point of view. Overall, though, this is a flawed attempt at what could, and should, have been an impressive work. If you want the definitive history of this period, read Peter Hennessy.
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I purchased this book because there is a lot of talk of "austerity measures" currently, and I felt I didn't have a proper understanding of the post war era. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Pippa.C.Payne
Started well, petered out
I really wanted to like this book, and was intrigued by the approach of taking a whole host of material sources to paint the pictures of life in Britain immediately after... Read more
Published on 26 May 2009 by Mist of Time
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