For the first time the Sunday Times bestseller Austerity Britain is available in one complete paperback volume. Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices
- vivid unselfconscious & unaware of what the future holds. A Chingford housewife endures the tribulations of rationing; a retired schoolteacher observes during a royal visit how well-fed the Queen looks; a pernickety civil servant in Bristol is oblivious to anyones troubles but his own. An array of working-class witnesses describe how life in post-war Britain is with little regard for liberal niceties or the feelings of their betters. Many of these voices will stay with the reader in future volumes jostling alongside well-known figures like John Arlott (here making his first radio broadcast still in police uniform) Glenda Jackson (taking the 11+) & Doris Lessing newly arrived from Africa struck by the levelling poverty of postwar Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political economic & social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched often amusing & always intensely entertaining & readable the first volume of David Kynastons ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.