When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.05
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.05, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
The 1970s was the decade that formed my politics and Andy Beckett captures it perfectly. No-one will ever write a better biography of this decade that saw the twilight of social democracy and the beginning of the Thatcher/Reagan era which now too enters its twilight. I just couldn't put it down. --Ken Livingstone<br /><br />What makes this book such an evocative and riveting read is the archival record of an approaching thunderstorm, which he describes vividly and honestly. ... (A) compelling narrative. --Francis Wheen, Literary Review<br /><br />(A) beautifully written and hugely entertaining book. The author has the ability to make the prosaic seem exciting and some of his characters would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. --Roy Hattersley, Daily Telegraph
What makes this book such an evocative and riveting read is the archival record of an approaching thunderstorm, which he describes vividly and honestly. ... (A) compelling narrative. --Francis Wheen, Literary Review
(A) beautifully written and hugely entertaining book. The author has the ability to make the prosaic seem exciting and some of his characters would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. --Roy Hattersley, Daily Telegraph
What makes this book such an evocative and riveting read is the archival record of an approaching thunderstorm, which he describes vividly and honestly. ... (A) compelling narrative. --Francis Wheen, Literary Review
(A) beautifully written and hugely entertaining book. The author has the ability to make the prosaic seem exciting and some of his characters would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. --Roy Hattersley, Daily Telegraph
Review
(A) fabulous book.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
101 of 106 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
On page 2 the author writes "I was born in 1969". As someone who took a keen interest in current affairs throughout the 1970s, I prepared myself to spot lots of mistakes from a writer who was only a child. However, the nearest I came to spotting one (not that I was particularly looking for them) was the omission from the index of Ian Paisley, who has a single mention (page 96).
This book turned out to be a thoroughly and scrupulously researched history of that derided decade, mostly political but also touching on matters like pop festivals. It is a detailed analysis, with the benefit of hindsight, from the beginning of the Heath era to the beginning of the Thatcher one. Beckett's list of sources, including books, articles, and TV and radio broadcasts from the time, runs to no less than 25 pages, and the book took 5 years to write. He personally interviewed several major players of the era, including Ted Heath, Denis Healey, Jack Jones (recently deceased), and Arthur Scargill. These interviews, with fascinating descriptions of the characters 30 years on, are particularly delightful. So any idea that someone who had just turned 10 by the end of the decade is unsuited to write such a book must be rejected.
The book is in 4 parts, entitled Optimism, Shocks, New Possibilities, and The Reckoning. The chapter titles are sometimes obscure until the reader has read several pages; "The Great White Ghost" refers to Heath, "Margaret and the Austrians" refers to Thatcher's espousal of the so-called Austrian school of monetarism, while "William the Terrible", which completely mystified me until almost the end of the chapter, refers to the US Treasury Secretary in 1976.
Several events of the decade are described and discussed in great detail, such as the Saltley coke depot dispute of 1972, when Scargill came to prominence, and the Grunwick dispute of 1977-78. Beckett's research into the latter revealed a previously unknown fact, namely the location of the HQ of the self-styled National Association for Freedom which did much to break the strike.
At a time (2009) when everyone is obsessed by the economic crisis, it is interesting to recall that there was just as much obsession at times like the 3-day week (1974), the sterling crisis (1976), and the so-called Winter of Discontent (1979). In fact there have probably been few years in the past 50 when it has not been felt that there was a "crisis" of one kind or another; the British take almost a perverse delight in them (it seems to me).
I could not detect any political bias on the author's part, except perhaps right at the end when he opines that Callaghan was very unlucky and Thatcher very lucky during most of her term in office.
For someone such as myself it was great to re-live that decade, and to be reminded of some almost-forgotten events, and for younger readers this is a highly instructive and insightful book into our recent history; I can vouch for its authenticity.
This book turned out to be a thoroughly and scrupulously researched history of that derided decade, mostly political but also touching on matters like pop festivals. It is a detailed analysis, with the benefit of hindsight, from the beginning of the Heath era to the beginning of the Thatcher one. Beckett's list of sources, including books, articles, and TV and radio broadcasts from the time, runs to no less than 25 pages, and the book took 5 years to write. He personally interviewed several major players of the era, including Ted Heath, Denis Healey, Jack Jones (recently deceased), and Arthur Scargill. These interviews, with fascinating descriptions of the characters 30 years on, are particularly delightful. So any idea that someone who had just turned 10 by the end of the decade is unsuited to write such a book must be rejected.
The book is in 4 parts, entitled Optimism, Shocks, New Possibilities, and The Reckoning. The chapter titles are sometimes obscure until the reader has read several pages; "The Great White Ghost" refers to Heath, "Margaret and the Austrians" refers to Thatcher's espousal of the so-called Austrian school of monetarism, while "William the Terrible", which completely mystified me until almost the end of the chapter, refers to the US Treasury Secretary in 1976.
Several events of the decade are described and discussed in great detail, such as the Saltley coke depot dispute of 1972, when Scargill came to prominence, and the Grunwick dispute of 1977-78. Beckett's research into the latter revealed a previously unknown fact, namely the location of the HQ of the self-styled National Association for Freedom which did much to break the strike.
At a time (2009) when everyone is obsessed by the economic crisis, it is interesting to recall that there was just as much obsession at times like the 3-day week (1974), the sterling crisis (1976), and the so-called Winter of Discontent (1979). In fact there have probably been few years in the past 50 when it has not been felt that there was a "crisis" of one kind or another; the British take almost a perverse delight in them (it seems to me).
I could not detect any political bias on the author's part, except perhaps right at the end when he opines that Callaghan was very unlucky and Thatcher very lucky during most of her term in office.
For someone such as myself it was great to re-live that decade, and to be reminded of some almost-forgotten events, and for younger readers this is a highly instructive and insightful book into our recent history; I can vouch for its authenticity.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Born in 1969, my memories of the 1970s are limited, but I do recall the National Front at their peak; being forced to choose between Arsenal, my local football team, and Spurs, supported by my dad; glue sniffers allegedly controlling the council estates; my parents' finding punk so totalling incomprehensible; power cuts; and hot summers with plastic car seats that burnt your arms and legs. And it all ending in tears, with the election of Thatcher.
Andy Beckett's biography of the decade rings true and explains so much. This is a book to gorge on.
Journalistic, rather than scholarly, When the Lights Went Out nevertheless benefits from an incredibly broad research base and author interviews with a great many key players like style and culture gurus, workers who featured in newspapers during the three-day week, politicians of every hue, strike makers and breakers and would be militiamen. Strangely, with each visit the subject appears to still be living in the past.
Naturally, there are parallels with today, but these are too easily overstated. By the end the 1970s appears ever so foreign, truly a different country.
Andy Beckett's biography of the decade rings true and explains so much. This is a book to gorge on.
Journalistic, rather than scholarly, When the Lights Went Out nevertheless benefits from an incredibly broad research base and author interviews with a great many key players like style and culture gurus, workers who featured in newspapers during the three-day week, politicians of every hue, strike makers and breakers and would be militiamen. Strangely, with each visit the subject appears to still be living in the past.
Naturally, there are parallels with today, but these are too easily overstated. By the end the 1970s appears ever so foreign, truly a different country.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
If The Sixties meant we'd never had it so good (as the Prime Minister told us) then The Seventies were where we paid for our pleasures. But memories of coal strikes, inflation and rotting rubbish in the street on the one hand, and flared trousers and T-Rex on the other don't really count as history - just as memory (and in some case, bad memories). Having had my memory of the period awakened by watching The Red Riding Trilogy I was pleased to read this wide-ranging and thoughtful history of the period. Like all good recent history it resorts the memory of those who lived through it, it adds some perspective to events, and it challenges their inevitability. I had forgotten whole sections of these events and misordered others.
Andy Beckett doesn't just give us the politics: Harold Wilson in his Gannex mac, Grocer Heath's almost tragic mismatch between personality and belief, Sunny Jim Callaghan and a perhaps not yet quite Iron Lady, but certainly galvanised. He also takes us through social change like the rise of Women's Lib and Gay Lib and of environmentalism. Yet at the end of it all one wonders what it was that snapped Britain out of that left-wing consensus into (within a few years) a right-wing semi-consensus. Was it North Sea Oil? Was it just a "changing of the guard"? Or is all politics and economics simply a tidal sea in which trends wash in and wash out.
A very enjoyable and thought-provoking book.
Andy Beckett doesn't just give us the politics: Harold Wilson in his Gannex mac, Grocer Heath's almost tragic mismatch between personality and belief, Sunny Jim Callaghan and a perhaps not yet quite Iron Lady, but certainly galvanised. He also takes us through social change like the rise of Women's Lib and Gay Lib and of environmentalism. Yet at the end of it all one wonders what it was that snapped Britain out of that left-wing consensus into (within a few years) a right-wing semi-consensus. Was it North Sea Oil? Was it just a "changing of the guard"? Or is all politics and economics simply a tidal sea in which trends wash in and wash out.
A very enjoyable and thought-provoking book.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Worthy,Objective,Interesting political essay of the 70's
Born in the mid-60's,the 70's was the decade I grew up as a child and will always be the most important,most hated,most loved,most horrifying and most fascinating period of my... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jonathan Hayward
More history,less author
This book does not do what it says on the tin. The details of all the large events of the seventies are sketchy to say the least. Read more
Published 3 months ago by living writer
Good reading
This is quite an intelligent review of the political upheavals of the 1970's- even if the author cannot always keep his left-wing bias under control. Read more
Published 7 months ago by B. Todd
A good piece of nostalgia
People of my generation {born in 65} generally think of the seventies as a idyllic period ,but it was'nt all space hoppers & chopper bikes , the country was in a mess , politcal... Read more
Published 8 months ago by D. S. Sample
Finally worked out what was going on when I was a child!
As a child born in 1966, the 70s were my childhood.
While I was a ware of strikes, power cuts, and my parents talking about odd deals to do with currency, my only real... Read more
While I was a ware of strikes, power cuts, and my parents talking about odd deals to do with currency, my only real... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Alec
Thank goodness it's not written by a historian!
This is an excellent book - it's one of the few that situates the 70's (or any history for that matter) with more recent events, and provides a really nice narrative that puts you... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Dr. G. H. Walker
A respectable account of the 1970s
This is a very well researched and readable account of political developments in the 1970s, the challenges facing the consistently weak Heath, Wilson and Callaghan administrations... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Neil Kernohan
A real gem of a book
This book gives the reader a detailed overview of exactly what happened in the UK's most infamous decade. Read more
Published 18 months ago by A. P. Wall
Brilliant history of Britain in the 1970s
Andy Beckett's "When the Lights Went Out" is about as good as period histories can get. It's not easy to write a 500+ page work on merely a decade in the history of modern, wealthy... Read more
Published 19 months ago by M. A. Krul
Living history
Andy Beckett, Guardian feature writer, has put together here a thorough, investigative and, most importantly, realistic history of the 70s. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Ian Shine
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
