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Modernity Britain: 1957-1962
Current price:
$55.00
Publication Date: December 2nd, 2014
Publisher:
Bloomsbury USA
ISBN:
9781620408094
Pages:
880
Description
The late 1950s and early 1960s was a period in its own right-neither the stultifying early to midfifties nor the liberating mid- to late-sixties-and an action-packed, dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain started to take shape.
These were the “never had it so good” years, in which mass affluence began to change, fundamentally, the tastes and even the character of the working class; when films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and TV soaps like Coronation Street and Z Cars at last brought that class to the center of the national frame; when Britain gave up its empire; when economic decline relative to France and Germany became the staple of political discourse; when “youth” emerged as a fully fledged cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; when a new breed of meritocrats came through; and when the Lady Chatterley trial, followed by the Profumo scandal, at last signaled the end of Victorian morality.
David Kynaston argues that a deep and irresistible modernity zeitgeist was at work, in these and many other ways, and he reveals as never before how that spirit of the age unfolded, with consequences that still affect us today.
Praise for Modernity Britain: 1957-1962
“Kynaston continues his history of postwar Britain (after Austerity Britain: 1945–1951 and Family Britain: 1951–1957) in this rich tapestry of political, socioeconomic, and cultural developments . . . Kynaston has a knack for narrative pacing and manages to hold the reader's attention in this comprehensive, multifaceted look at a changing period.” —Publishers Weekly
“Volumes full of treasure, serious history with a human face.” —Hilary Mantel, Observer, Summer Reads
“David Kynaston resembles a novelist impersonating a historian. His books read like fiction disguised as documentary . . . His method evokes the sumptuous messiness of human experience. He depicts history as an unfolding, ill-managed pageant . . . His books so enriching, improving and endearing . . . Shrewd, funny and ever-readable . . . In Kynaston's history books, the reader can hear the people speak. He has an elocutionist's sense of people's diction.” —Guardian
“The Britain we know today takes shape in these pages. Monumental and highly readable.” —Kirkus Reviews
“He conveys 1950s life more vividly than any historian before him . . . Masterful.” —The Economist
