Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 Hardcover – May 13, 2008
A majestic people's history of England in the years immediately following the end of World War II, and a surprise bestseller in the UK.
As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II , and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, compellingly readable account of the following six years, during which the country indomitably rebuilt itself.
Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle England's experience from bottom to top: coursing through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voices, eloquently and passionately displaying the country's remarkable spirit even as they were unaware of what the future would hold. Together they present a fascinating portrait of the English people at a climactic point in history, and Kynaston skillfully links their stories to the bigger, headline-making events of the time. Their stories also jostle alongside those of more well-known figures like celebrated journalist-to-be Jon Arlott (making his first radio broadcast), actress Glenda Jackson, and writer Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa and struck by the leveling poverty of postwar Britain. Austerity Britain gives new meaning to the hardship and heroism experienced by England in the face of Germany's assaults.
-
Print length704 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
PublisherWalker Books
-
Publication dateMay 13, 2008
-
Dimensions6.72 x 2.13 x 9.12 inches
-
ISBN-100802716938
-
ISBN-13978-0802716934
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker
Review
“Exemplary social history of a time still fresh in many Britons' minds--and much different from the postwar era in America.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“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.” ―Publishers Weekly
“An engrossing, kaleidoscopic portrait of a people from a particular time and place. This is history as total immersion.” ―Barry Gewen, New York Times
“This sparkling book--deeply and imaginatively researched, written with bounce, and informed by the wryest sensibility--charts the evolution of British society during the depleted and dingy years 1945–1951….With wit and ingenuity, Kynaston mines opinion surveys, radio shows, advertising slogans, parliamentary reports, and above all letters, diaries, and memoirs to evoke the gray tinge that permeated postwar life--the shabby frocks, the sallow faces, the grubby train compartments, the dreary meals ("all winter greens and root vegetables and hamburgers made of grated potato and oatmeal and just a little meat," the food writer Marguerite Patten recalled). ...Kynaston's sense of structure and pacing is sure, his mastery of his astonishingly diverse material unfailing (see his opening set piece on VE Day). More vividly and penetratingly than any work of history I can recall, this book captures the rhythms and texture of everyday life. To read it is to enter a world, which helps explain why it became a surprise best seller in the U.K.” ―Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly
“In Austerity Britain, David Kynaston weaves together personal reminiscences, statistical data and media accounts to paint a portrait of this critical moment in British history...Most histories describe this period as one of idealism, hope and progress. Mr. Kynaston would not entirely disagree, but he wants to emphasize what is too often overlooked: the sheer difficulty of life in Britain between 1945 and 1951. He shows us a war-weary society weighed down by the burdens of austerity. He brings to life a world – it wasn't so long ago – noticeably unaided by the conveniences and prosperity that Britain (like the rest of the West) now takes for granted.” ―William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal
“In Austerity Britain: 1945-1951, British social historian David Kynaston tells the story of those drab, difficult postwar years so familiar to viewers of the stiff-upper-lip, black-and-white films the British studios were turning out at the time (‘Brief Encounter,' ‘Passport to Pimlico'). Reading the many first-person accounts in this weighty, immensely detailed and sometimes evocative volume, you begin to see that, for countless people in that place at that time, life really was lived in a world devoid of color -- a place of long lines, of shortages, of frustration.” ―Martin Rubin, Los Angeles Times
“Absolutely masterful and absorbing, helped considerably by the liberal use of feedback from the vox pop through diaries, opinion polls, newspapers and broadcast reports...England was old and not very merry, a state of affairs conveyed with brilliant clarity and poignant depth in Austerity Britain.” ―Jonathan E. Lazarus, Newark Star Ledger
About the Author
David Kynaston was widely acclaimed for his four-volume history The City of London. He is currently a visiting professor at Kingston University in England.
Product details
- Publisher : Walker Books; 1st edition (May 13, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 704 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0802716938
- ISBN-13 : 978-0802716934
- Item Weight : 2.65 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.72 x 2.13 x 9.12 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,273 in Great Britain History (Books)
- #10,988 in Historical Study (Books)
- #48,104 in United States History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
It is not a pretty story. Post-war England was drab, lacking many basics, watching its empire dissolve, and driven by a strong, centralized plan to restore the economy that changed the basic way people looked at business and government. And, with the continuing pressures of rebuilding the rest of Europe, the threat of further communist expansion, and the rise of American power, perhaps Britain went too far in moving towards a benevolent but often clumsy and experimental form of socialism. It would be almost another forty years and the decisions of the Thatcher government, that saw the maturity and, in some cases, the reversal of this social and cultural experiment.
This is a long, dense and colorful book, full of first-person details and observations, many of them from the surveys and observations of the government itself. Chapters focus on various aspects of the cultural and social revolution, in the classroom, on the factory floor, in the (mine) pits, in the shops, in the media, and more. At one bookstore where I looked for the book, they claimed that it was a textbook and not part of their trade book collection. While it is as thorough -- or more -- as any academic textbook, it reads more like a highly detailed, multi-authored journal or catalog of the period. Invest the time.
All of which makes it highly readable, and one is struck both by the conservatism of British society (even though a reformist, overtly Socialist Labour government was elected to power in 1945) and the determination to create social justice (The New Jerusalem of the title) in Britain with scant regard for the situation in Britain's many colonies. Indeed one of the most striking arguments put forward in the book is that an early abandonment of the colonial project and deployment of the resources it took up into trade and industry may have resulted in Britain at least maintaining its pre war position as one of the great powers, rather than standing by as that preeminence gradually dribbled away
If there are any criticisms of this work, it is probably reflects the sources available to Kyanaston. There is no mention of Northern Ireland, little of Wales (other than the South Wales collieries) and little of the northern parts of England. Scotland is mainly discussed in the context of the urban planning of Glasgow
But as I say, this may be due to a lack of sources from those areas. What is a little more puzzling is a lack of discussion of the reintegration into society of demobilised servicemen - surely a key issue of the time
But none the less an excellent history, I am looking forward to the next volume
Top reviews from other countries
The presentation keeps a nice balance between the details of the doings of politicians and the views of 'the people' as recorded in journals, diaries and by the Mass Observation Organisation. In this way the monotony of too much of one kind of voice is avoided.
David Kynaston at the end of his account observed that what most people wanted was a safe, secure home life. He quotes from an old Dettol advert that sooths with a promise that this product is 'The Safe Way to safety whenever and wherever infection threatens your home'. I love it. In these present , grim days of the burgeoning corona virus crisis this is just what we crave, then and now.
well so no need to purchase the 2nd book. I grew up in this era and was amazed at how much I
recalled as I was only a child. Loved it!