Austerity Britain, 1945-51

About this book

"Austerity Britain launches the groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, which will tell the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 as never before." "Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of contemporary voices - vivid, unselfconscious, and unaware of what the future holds. Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, gamely endures the tribulations of rationing; Mary King, a retired schoolteacher in Birmingham, observes during a royal visit how well-fed the Queen looks; Henry St. John, a pernickety civil servant in Bristol, is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own; and an array of working-class witnesses describe exactly 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+) and Doris Lessing (newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling poverty of post-war Britain)." "Into this story David Kynaston weaves a critical, sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and even social landscape for the next three decades."--Jacket.