Customer Reviews
Comprehensive but strangely uninspiring account - By: B. Youngs, 07 May 2008 
No-one could fault the time & effort that have gone into producing this extensive work but the sheer volume of facts, figures & comments might well prove mind-numbing to the average reader & certainly led to me - who can just remember the periodin question - losing interest & scanning through pages looking for the essence amongst innumerable details. A great resource for a student of the times but not for those seeking a general account of these important years.
A Very Enjoyable Trip Through Late 40s Britain - By: Dr. R. Brandon, 16 Dec 2007 
This compilation of two books covering the period 1945 - 51 & intended to be the first two parts of a work that will progress to 1979, is very enjoyable & sweeps the reader along at a great pace. The daunting 632 pages thus become quite manageable. Kynaston covers the actions of the major movers & shakersin the government &in sport, architecture, industry & the unions, & the literary world. These action are contrasted with the feelings & attitudes of the people on the receiving end as judged by diarists & the results of the Mass Observation exercise that was stillin place. Kynaston handles this wealth of material with great skill & moves through all these areas with great aplomb such that the narrative never becomes boring or a disjointed list of different topics.
Minor criticisms of this otherwise excellent book from someone who lived through the period might include a little too much space given to racial attitudes & a failure to really capture the feeling & appearance of bombed cities. There is also a failure to capture the atmosphere of a hospital of the time which was, of course, completely different to today, or the fear of unwanted pregnancy. There is also a tendency to anticipate new building that only really became significant after 1951. Nevertheless, these are relatively minor quibbles & I commend this book as a great read to all those interestedin UK domestic history of the late 1940s, & look forward to further instalments.
Wonderful instructive and entertaining history - By: Mr. J. P. Eedy, 09 Dec 2007 
I was aged tenin 1945 & experienced this period of British history & found this brilliantin its accurate depiction of everyday life, account of the political scene & the birth of the welfare state. Read it & understand where a lot of those chickens (good & bad) now roosting on this sceptred isle came from.
An outstanding study of a changing nation - By: Mark Klobas, 21 Oct 2007 David Kynaston begins his book, the first of a planned multi-volume survey of Britain, on a high note by chronicling the celebrations of V-E Day. It is a joyous starting point for his ambitious goal, which is to chart the evolution of the nation from the end of the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governmentin 1979. It is an era that began with the commitment to nationalizing industries & creating the modern welfare state & ended with a government winning power with a promise to undo many of these programs, & Kynaston plans to show how the country developed over this period. This he does by focusing on the people who livedin those times, drawing from the early work of Mass-Observation, contemporary press accounts & the private writings of diarists to provide a sprawling portrait of Britainin the late 1940s.
What particularly stands out is how much different the nation was back then. The Britain that emerges from these pages is a nation driven by an industrial economy, with an overwhelmingly white & predominantly male workforcein physically demanding jobs producing a quarter of the world's manufactured goods. The everyday lives of these Britons was different as well, lacking not only the modern conveniences that the author notes earlyin the text but even many of the basics of prewar life, basics which had been sacrificed to the exigencies of war. Kynaston notes their growing frustration with ongoing scarcity, a frustration that illustrated the gulf between their harsh realities & the idealistic dreams of government planners that is a persistent theme of the book.
Richly detailed, superbly written, & supplemented with excellent photographs, Kynaston's book is an outstanding account of postwar Britain. It offers readers an evocative account of a much different era of British history, yet one with all-too familiar concerns over youth, crime, & an emerging multiracial society. Having devoured its pages, I look forward eagerly to the next installment & the insights Kynaston will offer.
A very readable history of post war Britain - By: Peter Wade, 15 Aug 2007 I read a reviewin The Sunday Times when the book first came out. I thought it was a suitably obscure subject & asked the library to get me a copy. In then became a bestseller & I was told that the waiting list was 54 & I was 27.
I then read better reviews & they said it was a great book. I was bornin 1950 so that period of history is of interest to me as I believed it shaped the1950s & 1960s & some of the attitudes still prevail today.
The book is a great review of British lifein its every aspect & the thinking of the time. We had won the war but the peace was tougher than the war for a lot of people. Rationing went on for years & the old attitudesin society did not break down quickly enough.
I did not start to take notice of what was going onin society until about 1963 & the attitudes that are set outin this book certainly prevailed for thr next twenty years. All the old threadbare cliches of privilege & what society was all about still existed.
In 1946 the National Trust had a meeting & one of their representatives said about Montacute Housein somerset that the public could not of course be admitted to the house because they smelt. There was two minutes dead silence.
People did smellin 1946 if you read about their washing an living conditions.
Housing was a big priority then as now Neil Kinnock's family movedin November 1947 to a new two bed-roomed prefab on a council estatein Nant-y Bwch " It was like moving to Beverly Hills he recalled " It had a fridge, a bath, central heating & a smokeless grate... & people used to come just to look at it.
The BBC was holding up standards as always & bannedin 1948 jokes about lavatories, effeminacyin men, immorality of any kind.Extreme care should be taken about certain references such as pre natal influences(e.g. his mother was frightened by a donkey & marital infidelity.
The public's views on extra marital sex were recorded. One taxi proprietor said "I may say my wife & I have dropped one or two people who weren't playing the game ,we didn't think they were worth knowing."
It is an interesting old fashioned view that you would ostracise people for immorality. You would be ploughing a lonely furrow now if you did that.
In economic terms there was lot of price fixing & when proper competition came later British industry were not up to it because they had had such cosy arrangements.
There were standards to be maintained & a lot of people saw themselves as gentleman & had a code " Shoes have laces", "motor cars are black" "jelly is not officer's food". People believed this stuff.
Price fixing was everywhere between such companies as Lyons & Wall'sin ice creams. Selling was a gentleman's existence with Sheffield operating as a big cartel. Orders were reported to the respective trade & association committee & at the end the day they would tell you what prices to quote. The price fixing was incredible.
British industry was not prepared to follow the American gospel of productivity & the 3 Ss standardisation, simplification specialisation.
In education only those who passed the eleven plus were deemed fit for a decent education & people like Cliff Richard did not pass & neither did John Prescott & the author said did not get the bike & thereafter never quite forgave the world.
All these attitudes were alive & well right through my teensin the sixties & well into the seventies. Some of them are still around now sixty years later.
If you want to understand present day Britain this is the book for you & at 632 pages before you get to the notes & index it is a hefty read but well worth it.
I will be quoting it to all those who think today's problems are some how unique.
We have seen it all before.
