Family Britain, 1951-1957, , David Kynaston, , 2010, 1408800837, 9781408800836, 784 pages. As in Austerity Britain, an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices drive the narrative. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as austerity and rationing gradually give way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. These and many other voices give a rich, unsentimental picture of everyday life in the 1950s. We also encounter well-known figures on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals) and Tiger's Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester).All this is part of a colourful, unfolding tapestry, in which the great national events - the Tories returning to power, the death of George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis - jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavour: Butlin's holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers, Hancock's Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston's Family Britain offers an unrivalled take on a largely cohesive, ordered, still very hierarchical society gratefully starting to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s towards domestic ease and affluence..

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As in Austerity Britain, an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices drive this narrative. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as austerity and rationing gradually give way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; and, the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. These and many other voices give a rich, unsentimental picture of everyday life in the 1950s. We also encounter well-known figures on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals) and Tiger's Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester). All this is part of a colourful, unfolding tapestry, in which the great national events - the Tories returning to power, the death of George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis - jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavour: Butlin's holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers, "Hancock's Half-Hour", Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston's "Family Britain" offers an unrivalled take on a largely cohesive, ordered, still very hierarchical society gratefully starting to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s towards domestic ease and affluence.

PRAISE FOR AUSTERITY BRITAIN: 'This wonderful volume is only the first in a series that will take us to 1979 and the election of . When complete, Kynaston's skill in mixing eyewitness accounts and political analysis will surely be one of the greatest and most enduring publishing ventures for generations.' Brian Thompson, Observer 'Even readers who can remember the years Kynaston writes about will find they are continually surprised by the richness and diversity of his material ... mouth-watering' John Carey, Sunday Times 'The book is a marvel ... the level of detail is precise and fascinating' John Campbell, Sunday Telegraph 'A wonderfully illuminating picture of the way we were' Roy Hattersley, The Times

Family Britain by David Kynaston is a comprehensive study of life in Britain after the Second World War. It is very well researched and although over 700 pages long it is written in a style which makes few strenuous demands on the reader - the pages can be turned quickly and effortlessly as the narrative unfolds.

It covers a wide range of domestic issues, focusing both on the poorer sections of society and those who survived the deprivations of the war from a better-off postion. The politics are carefully explained, supported by extensive quotations drawn from a wide range of sources. The author also brings into the picture vignettes of certain people who have susequently become more well-known showing where they were in their chilhood days of the 50s.

For those of us who were brought up in this period, this book provides a useful reminder of how our own lives formed part of the greater pattern of change that was unfolding. It also helps to place our own experiences into perspective. My only slight criticism is that the chapters occasionally jump from one topic to another without a clear link, but the chronlogy of the period 1951-1957 is always maintained.

This awesome study is the follow-up to Austerity Britain 1945-1951, and if you've read that book then you will know what to expect here. Family Britain contains the same mixture of social issues, politics, cultural developments and personal reminiscences - drawn from a wide variety of sources including Mass Observation studies and personal diaries (we continue following the lives of Nella Last, Judy Haines, Anthony Heap and the other private diarists from the first book) - with the emphasis always on how the great events and changing times affected ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Beginning with the Festival of Britain and ending with Eden's resignation, the book goes through the years basically chronologically, but pauses to consider the general themes and social issues of the period looking at race, class, housing, secondary schools, religion, the place of women and of course family life among many other things.

It really is a fascinating book, breathtaking in its scope and range of sources and at all times a joy to read. It was also very satisfying how the author looked at issues in order to test our conventional wisdom of the period and - pleasingly - often shows how much more complicated the true picture is (eg the place of Christianity in Britain or the state of neighbourliness and sense of community etc.) It is also frequently pretty funny, with wry asides and the inclusion of the odd amusing response in with the contemporaneous survey evidence ("Sorry, can't talk ducks look - I got no teeth!) and I always looked forward to the latest reviews from the private diary of minor civil servant and theatre nut Anthony Heap (Waiting for Godot is "infantile...dreary...preposterous," Look Back In Anger is "monotonous...puerile...nauseating.") In addition to the voices featured in the previous book we follow such now-well-known figures as Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing and John Fowles as well as hearing mention of kids like 'Mike' Jagger and Christine Keeler, foreshadowing the next instalment.

I would have liked a bit more politics (not at the expense of anything else though) and some of the transitions between paragraphs were a bit silly (eg after talking about two people he might continue with: "Probably neither were in Ipswich two days later when..." etc.) Plus, although the book does spend a fair amount of time in Glasgow and the English North and Midlands as well as the South, there isn't much about Wales, the rest of Scotland or Northern Ireland (nothing at all if I remember rightly) - which I know a lot of people take issue over with books that claim to be about 'Britain.' with a professional interest in this period. You don't have to have read the previous volume to enjoy this book I'm sure, though I read Austerity Britain directly before reading this so I've basically just read 1,350 pages of this stuff and if the subsequent volumes were available I would happily read straight through to the page 3,500 or whatever it will be when this series is finished. From the afterword in this book we can infer that the next volume will be called Modernity Britain. Read more ›

A note of honesty here, I enjoy reading social history (so there is the Nerd admission up front!), particularly English social history. However, there is something extra special about this publication. Namely, while usually reading a history book I require some fiction on the go at the same time (some Stephen King let's say....just to keep the Nerd factor at an optimum....yes and I like Torchwood....), but this is unputdownable. Do not be put off by the sheer size of the book (776 pages including index), if you are looking for a narrative that will make you smile, chuckle out loud, while providing poignant moments aplenty - then get this book! David Kynaston is to be congratulated on the remarkable achievement of putting together so many different 'voices' from people. From housewives to M.P.'s, from newspaper headlines to Mass Observation findings - they all speak to you with a remarkable immediacy. Clearly this is a winner for people who remember this period of English history, but equally so for people like myself who were not even born yet. This is no mere 'sentimental' 'good old days' nostalgia. So people from a younger generation do not be put off!

The content is fabulous, but the book's organization seemingly non-existent. This feels like stream-of-consciousness history: chapters with no clearly defined theme, only the vaguest of chronological sequences, a throwing together of apparently random material. For all that, it's a marvellously evocative mix of social and political, interjected with some keen analysis, and it is enjoyable to bounce suddenly from a spat between Bevan and Gaitskell, to Mrs Jones complaining about the price of tea. But the book's amorphous structure leaves my desire to LEARN things from a history book completely unfulfilled. Rather than present an understanding of the processes by which the decade evolved, it simply immerses the reader in the world of the 50s. By the time I'm finished, I'll have a much better FEELING for the decade, but I don't think I'll KNOW much more about it.

As in his highly acclaimed Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices to drive his narrative of 1950s Britain. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as rationing gradually gives way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. Well-known figures are encountered on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals), and comic-strip hero Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester).

In this colorful, unfolding tapestry, great national events—the Tories’ return to power, the death of George VI , the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis—jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavor: Butlin’s holiday camps, Hancock’s Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle, and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston’s Family Britain offers an unrivaled take on British society as it started to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s toward domestic ease and affluence.

Starred Review. Following U.K. bestseller Austerity Britain 1945–1951, this is the second title in historian Kynaston's series on postwar Britain. It was an eventful time. A BBC survey conducted after King George VI's death in 1952 found the lower classes were upset that news of his death disrupted their favorite radio programs. The media was saturated with news of Elizabeth II's coronation as well as Princess Margaret's affair with a divorced man. The new Tory Home Secretary gave prosecuting homosexuals the highest priority; the end of meat and butter rationing in 1954 after 14 years caused jubilation; there was a 1955 national rail strike; and Ruth Ellis swung from the gallows for murdering her cheating, abusive socialite lover. Kynaston makes excellent use of personal diaries from housewives, civil servants, and the famous, all struggling with personal lives as they voice opinions on issues of the day (priceless letters by novelist Kingsley Amis show him knocking Dylan Thomas to poet Philip Larkin). As Kynaston juggles a staggering number of sources, he gives us an audaciously intimate, rich, and atmospheric history that is so real, you can just about taste it. Photos. (Jan.)

This second in one hopes will be a continuing series of marvelous portrayals of Britain in the post-World War II years takes up where "Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem)" leaves off and doesn't miss a resonating beat in doing so. Author Kynaston's History-writing technique is to my mind the equivalent of "pointillism" in painting (see, e.g., Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte") wherein Kynaston's hundreds, if not thousands, of scrupulously arranged and presented vignettes and first-person recollections combine to produce the same effect as Seurat's tiny dabs of paint: when considered alone, they convey little meaning, but in combination they counter-intuitively evoke a richer and more compelling picture than the most carefully crafted narrative or masterful brush strokes.

I believe it important to read these books in series because "Austerity Britain" recounts the back-and-forth of the historic governmental initiatives underlying the formation of the British "welfare state" whereas "Family Britain" is more a sociological study highlighting the evolving effects of these fundamental changes and the glacial pace of the lifting of wartime rationing, the snail's progress of just-around-the-corner prosperity, etc. Taken together, they are simply an unparalled portrayal of the country and its people resolutely striving to recover from their literally existential trials.

Finally, as quite an old guy, I couldn't help but grow a little whimsical when reading this account of Britain's difficult 50's. I was a boy during the same period, growing up in Schenectady, NY, and as I was prompted to reflect on the decade, I was reminded that it was the last extended period of my life when things seemed to make sense. Those younger will have been taught that they were sleepy, dull years when nothing much happened. True. And you don't know what you missed.

In the early 1950s Great Britain was a nation in transition. On the one hand it was still an imperial power, a workshop to much of the world, a land with a tradition-bound patriarchal society. Yet on the other it was seeing the first results of the many social and economic changes underway, with the clearing of the Victorian-era slums, the growing challenges of a multi-racial population, and the rapid proliferation of television just some of the signs pointing to the future that was to come. This transition and the people who faced it are the subjects of David Kynaston's book, which chronicles life in Britain between the Festival of Britain in 1951 and Prime Minister Anthony Eden's resignation six years later.

In many respects Kynaston's book is less a narrative of these years than a panorama that allows the reader to take in details both large and small. Through them he depicts the emergence of what he calls a "proto-consumerist" society from years of rationing and deprivation. As Britain shook off the postwar austerity, its citizens embraced the burgeoning prosperity as their due after their years of sacrifice. As Kynaston demonstrates it was a reward enjoyed by a broader swath of society than ever before, yet as more people enjoyed the benefits of prosperity a growing number of concerns were expressed about the damage being done to society, of the breakdown of communities and the rebelliousness of youth.

Kynaston recounts these years in a sympathetic and perceptive manner. Seemingly nothing is too insignificant to escape his attention, while his ability to draw significance from these trivial facts supplies added depth his account of the events and developments of the era. Yet his narrative never bogs down in the facts, transitioning smoothly from one topic to another without ever losing his reader's interest. The result is a magnificent work, a worthy sequel to his earlier volume, Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem), and one that will leave its readers eager for the next installment in his "Tales of a New Jerusalem" series. Read more ›

Secondly, Kynaston slips in regular small asides that tend to discredit the previous 50 years of social studies. Specifically, that notions such as working-class solidarity and community are false and romantic fictions invented by left-of-centre historians and imposed from the outside. Further, that Labour governments and Labour policies and projects were inherently unworkable or unsuccessful, but no Conservative government or policy or project is subjecyed to criticism. The slant is made more blatant because the period 1951 to 1957, the ambit of this book, covers seven years of Conservative rule to one year of Labour rule.

In the autumn of 1954, “in sepulchral gloom at four o’clock on a November evening”, the seven-year-old Michael Ignatieff arrived in Britain from his native Canada. Almost immediately the future politician was struck by the contrast. “Fog closing in,” he remembered. “All the English spaces being different; the railway carriage being narrow; different smells. Woodbines in the air, the pervasive dampness, fog and chill everywhere, characters in cloth caps with white scarves, incredibly gnarled old gents carting your luggage to the train.” And although he found his new London home “absolutely freezing” and loathed the “little grey woolly socks” he had to wear at his private school, there were compensations – not least the excitement of seeing the “huge red buses looming up out of the fog”.

Fifty years ago, fog – or perhaps more accurately, smog – was an unavoidable element of everyday life, the inevitable result of so many homes burning so much coal. It seems to seep into every nook and cranny of David Kynaston’s outstanding history of Britain in the Fifties, so thick you can almost smell and taste it, like the “greeny-yellow vapour” that enveloped London in December 1952. “It was simply dreadful,” one woman recorded in her diary. “Visibility about six feet. And it got down the throat & nose and stung like pepper … All buses etc are suspended. I tripped on a curb & fell on my poor old bosom, left side.” “Oh, the fog!” another wrote the next day. “There was practically no traffic on the streets… People were ‘panicking’ at King’s Cross Tube as hordes of passengers who usually use buses sought to board trains.”

Like his justly acclaimed account of the Attlee years, Kynaston’s book is a deeply textured tapestry of everyday life the day before yesterday, a collage of diaries and memoirs every bit as rich and rewarding as a great Victorian novel. Even more than in his previous book, the politicians who dominated contemporary headlines are pushed offstage, making room for an eclectic collection of guides from obscure diarists and Mass-Observation interviewees to Ricky Tomlinson and Janet Street-Porter. Even Kynaston himself, a sensitive and often drily funny narrator, remains in the background: we feel we are immersed directly in the sights and smells of life in the Fifties, the apparently familiar but utterly different world of the Festival of Britain and the Suez Crisis, of Billy Wright and Stanley Matthews, of Kingsley Amis and Andy Pandy, of Gilbert Harding and the Goons.

One of the strengths of Kynaston’s last book was that it gently debunked the myths of the New Jerusalem, showing how most people, far from being enthused by Attlee’s social experiments, simply plodded along in their conservative and pragmatic way. In Family Britain, too, he takes a mildly revisionist line, questioning the idea that the Fifties was the high point of political consensus and showing how the two parties still clung to very different visions of the nation’s future. And while he confirms that this was a period of deep popular conservatism, in which people retreated to “familiar ways, familiar rituals, familiar relations”, he makes it clear that this was no golden age.

Britain in the Fifties was a society in which immigrants tramped the streets from one boarding house to another, their spirits consistently dashed by the signs reading “No Coloureds”. It was a society in which football hooligans pelted rival fans with bottles and invaded the pitch at the Rangers-Celtic game on New Year’s Day 1952, and one in which “teenage hooligans” ran amok on Brighton seafront long before Mods and Rockers had even been invented. It was a society that sentenced the mentally deficient Derek Bentley and the abused Ruth Ellis to death by hanging, and a society in which the Sunday Pictorial could run a series exposing the vice of homosexuality headlined “Evil Men”.

Yet while Kynaston’s Britain often appears astonishingly conservative, it also had an innocence that we have surely lost. At one point he quotes a funny passage from the Stowmarket Mercury, describing the visit in 1955 of Sir Alfred Munnings, the former president of the Royal Academy and a noted scourge of modern art, to the village hall in Brantham, Suffolk, for the traditional ceremony of “Dubbing the Knight”. In some ways, Sir Alfred cut a ludicrous figure, telling the girls that “the place of every woman is the home” and advising the boys to “marry a good, useful woman, not one of these silly asses who want to go to the pictures every night”. Yet it is easy to miss the fact that the visit meant a great deal both to Munnings – who started crying during the children’s songs – and to the children, who welcomed him with an enthusiasm and respect hard to imagine today. “As the meeting ended,” reported the local paper, “the children crowded round Sir Alfred waving autograph books.”

Kynaston is a master of these kinds of stories, funny and touching by turns, from the grammar-school chess coach who lamented the “regrettable tendency among juniors towards playing too much chess” – yes, you did read that correctly – to the railway porter who “being a working man” voted Labour in 1951, but nevertheless hoped “old Winston would get in this time”. “It looks as if it will be a narrow thing,” his interviewer said. “So it was at Dunkirk,” the porter said thoughtfully. “The old b------likes it narrow.” So he did, though he was hardly a man of the people. “Not a bad meal, not a bad meal,” Churchill said when his Minister of Food showed him the latest rationing plans. “But these are not rations for a meal or even for a day,” the minister nervously explained. “They are for a week.” http://kgarch.org/4m7.pdf http://kgarch.org/10h.pdf http://kgarch.org/60n.pdf http://kgarch.org/fek.pdf http://kgarch.org/4eb.pdf http://kgarch.org/g5l.pdf http://kgarch.org/dl2.pdf http://kgarch.org/873.pdf http://kgarch.org/50b.pdf http://kgarch.org/9fd.pdf http://kgarch.org/8mb.pdf