StartGroepenDiscussieMeerTijdgeest
Doorzoek de site
Onze site gebruikt cookies om diensten te leveren, prestaties te verbeteren, voor analyse en (indien je niet ingelogd bent) voor advertenties. Door LibraryThing te gebruiken erken je dat je onze Servicevoorwaarden en Privacybeleid gelezen en begrepen hebt. Je gebruik van de site en diensten is onderhevig aan dit beleid en deze voorwaarden.

Resultaten uit Google Boeken

Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.

Bezig met laden...

Austerity Britain: 1945-51 (2007)

door David Kynaston

Andere auteurs: Zie de sectie andere auteurs.

Reeksen: Tales of a New Jerusalem (1)

LedenBesprekingenPopulariteitGemiddelde beoordelingAanhalingen
5681541,700 (4.1)69
Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices - vivid, unselfconscious, and 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 anyone's 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+) and Doris Lessing (newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling of poverty of post-war Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, the first volume of David Kynaston's ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.… (meer)
Geen
Bezig met laden...

Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden.

Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.

» Zie ook 69 vermeldingen

1-5 van 15 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
David Kynaston begins his book, the first of a planned multi-volume survey of Britain, on a high note by chronicling the celebrations of V-E Day. It is a joyous starting point for his ambitious goal, which is to chart the evolution of the nation from the end of the Second World War to the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1979. It is an era that began with the commitment to nationalizing industries and creating the modern welfare state and ended with a government winning power with a promise to undo many of these programs, and Kynaston plans to show how the country developed over this period. This he does by focusing on the people who lived in those times, drawing from the early work of Mass-Observation, contemporary press accounts and the private writings of diarists to provide a sprawling portrait of Britain in the late 1940s.

What particularly stands out is how much different the nation was back then. The Britain that emerges from these pages is a nation driven by an industrial economy, with an overwhelmingly white and predominantly male workforce in physically demanding jobs producing a quarter of the world's manufactured goods. The everyday lives of these Britons was different as well, lacking not only the modern conveniences that the author notes early in the text but even many of the basics of prewar life, basics which had been sacrificed to the exigencies of war. Kynaston notes their growing frustration with ongoing scarcity, a frustration that illustrated the gulf between their harsh realities and the idealistic dreams of government planners that is a persistent theme of the book.

Richly detailed, superbly written, and supplemented with excellent photographs, Kynaston's book is an outstanding account of postwar Britain. It offers readers an evocative account of a much different era of British history, yet one with all-too familiar concerns over youth, crime, and an emerging multiracial society. Having devoured its pages, I look forward eagerly to the next installment and the insights Kynaston will offer. ( )
  MacDad | Mar 27, 2020 |
An interesting look at the state of Britain at the end of the second world war and the beginnings of recovery. Kynaston illustrates just how much the British suffered during the war years and how much had to be done. He provides a close look at food availability, housing, employment, economics, town planning, education, race relations, and the introduction of national health services. It shows that the first few years after the war were just as bleak, possibly more so, than the six years of conflict had been. As late as 1947 the already stringent rations were cut further, and for the first time potatoes were rationed.

In January 1947 it was noted by author and editor John Lehmann [friend of Christopher Isherwood]: "The adrenaline (i.e. of war) was no longer being pumped into our veins. We endured with misery and loathing the continual fuel cuts, the rooms private and public in which we shivered in our exhausted overcoats, while the snow blizzards swept through the country again and yet again. Were there to be no fruits of victory? The rationing cards and coupons that still had to be presented for almost everything from eggs to minute pieces of scraggy Argentine meat, from petrol to bed-linen and 'economy' suits, seemed far more squalid and unjust than during the war."

In 1950 the good news was that eggs and soap were no longer rationed, while meat (4 ounces weekly), cheese, fats, sugar, tea and candies remained on the rationed list. After 10 years of rationing, petrol was removed from the list just in time for the Whitsun weekend, causing long queues, including one over two miles long. There is no doubt that the six years following the war were in some ways harder than the war itself but the end was in sight.

Race discrimination was described by Guyanian E.R Braithwaite who, despite a Cambridge degree could only find a teaching job in one of the East End "sink schools". He was later to tell of the experience in his book To Sir, With Love which also became a memorable movie. New radio and television shows became so popular they made writers and actors into household names.

Kynaston's comprehensive information is a valuable resource for historians but, while frequently fascinating, it is more detailed than most readers will need. This substantial volume comprises the first two books of Tales of a New Jerusalem a projected series about Britain between 1945 and 1979 intended to tell the story of ordinary citizens and celebrities as well as the decision-makers. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher changed direction and so began a new era.

I've been reading this huge but excellent book for the last month. The only thing that prevented me from giving it five stars was that there was not one mention of Northern Ireland, my country of origin, that I know was affected to the same degree as the rest of Britain. ( )
  VivienneR | Feb 21, 2020 |
A very well written history of Britain in the immediate post-war years. Kynaston focuses on the social aspects of the time, rather than a sweeping political history, though there is still room for that. ( )
  Trotsky731 | Jan 27, 2019 |
Whew! Six weeks and 692 pages after cracking it open, I finally turned the last page in this history of Britain in the years immediately following World War II. The first word that comes to mind is NOT "exhausting" — rather it's "fascinating". As long as it took to read, I was sorry to see it end, and you can't say that about every 600-page book you read!

I was completely absorbed in Kynaston's meticulously detailed and annotated social history. He draws on public records, contemporaneous media reports, and most of all the personal diaries of scads of ordinary and not-so-ordinary Britons to lay bare not only the facts of what happened, when, and by whom, but how people from all walks of life felt and coped with it. Now and then I spotted the name of a Brit who was unknown then and has since become famous, but I suspect I missed a number that would have been recognizable to their fellow countrymen. One that I didn't miss sent a bit of a chill up my spine, as Kynaston scatters without fanfare a few informational nuggets about an unsuccessful young Tory politician named Margaret Roberts, who had yet to marry her eventual husband, Denis Thatcher. We've all seen how that movie ends.

The beauty of Kynaston's approach of mining personal diaries for information is the sheer depth and breadth of his depiction of the era's impact on the people of Great Britain. Even though I consider myself a history junkie I confess I had no idea how seriously difficult the country's economic situation was once VE- and VJ-Day had come and gone. Anecdotes about massive housing shortages, the continuing rationing of just about every household good you can imagine, and mandatory electrical blackouts for hours every day to conserve energy took a tremendous toll on the quality of people's physical and emotional lives. Despite the landslide victory by the Labour Party in 1945, the government struggled to implement democratic socialist policies that were meant to ease the post-war pain and jump-start the economy. Kynaston does a good job of laying out the reasons for their only sporadic success. (The one program that was popular from the start was the National Health Service, which this American read about with wistful envy.)

The only blemish keeping this from being a 5-star book for me might not be a factor for others: The book is clearly written for a British audience, and Kynaston tosses out names of sports teams and players, radio and television programmes and actors with little or no context. More than once he related an anecdote about a big crowd at some sporting event or other without specifying what sport he was talking about. I'm sure to Britons it's all perfectly clear, but I felt a bit at sea with these pop-culture and other insular references.

There are two further books (so far) in this historical series, [Family Britain: 1951-57] and [Modernity Britain 1957-62]. I believe Kynaston intends to take the series up to Thatcher's ascension to prime minister in 1979. I'm already on the lookout for a reasonably priced ebook of the next, as I can't imagine not continuing to learn more about this utterly fascinating topic. ( )
6 stem rosalita | May 22, 2018 |
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2886816.html

I read an greatly enjoyed the second book of this series a couple of years ago; I'm glad to say that the first is just as good, a detailed internal history of England (with a bit of Wales, less Scotland and no Northern Ireland) during basically the term of Attlee's Labour government. Kynaston's sympathy for the detail is tremendously engaging, and humanises a surprisingly alien place and time. There are some imporessive recurrent themes: rationing remained a constant reality (and of course enabled the black market to flourish), with most food remaining rationed until after the period covered in this book. Despite the Labour victory, government remained firmly in the hands of the civil service whose upper ranks shared a deep Establishment background - it was the 60s before anyone really challenged this. This was true also of the fledgling BBC, which did not even cover the 1950 World Cup (in which England was famously defeated by the Unites States). Some interesting people pop up again and again - Glenda Jackson and Pete Wyman, promising teenagers; the diarists both obscure (Henry St.John); and well-known (Molly Panter-Downs).

In contrast to the second book in the series, there is plenty of party politics here. The Labour Party, having won power (on the ideas framed by Michael Young, a figure I had forgotten about), successfully created the National Health Service and nationalised the coal mines, and crucially threw its lot in with Truman rather than Stalin. But I was unaware of the role that sudden death played in the politics of the day - Ellen Wilkinson, the Minister of Education, died in 1947, and Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary and the Lord Privy Seal, in 1951. (This just doesn't happen any more. The last British cabinet minister to die in office, of this writing, was Lord Williams of Mostyn in 2003; the last of the same weight as Wilkinson or Bevin was Anthony Crosland in 1977.)

The Labour government's reputation for competence was hit early on by an event for which it bore no responsibility and whose consequences it would have been very difficult for any government to mitigate: the exceptionally cold winter of 1946/47. Six weeks of very cold weather from late January to early March were followed by heavy rain, which added to the thaw to flood towns and countryside. The winter of 1962-63 was colder, but I guess that the country's infrastructure was better able to cope (and it was not immediately followed by heavy rain, as had happened in 1947). The bad weather hit industrial and agricultural productivity very hard, and certainly prolonged rationing and post-war hardship. Kynaston describes all of this vividly but unsentimentally, possibly the best passage of the book.

In summary, well worth reading. ( )
  nwhyte | Nov 4, 2017 |
1-5 van 15 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
This is a classic; buy at least three copies - one for yourself and two to give to friends and family. It is a classic because its portrayal of that unheroic, slightly shabby yet formative era that was Attlee's Britain is utterly convincing - and more than that, evocative. No one born in this country between 1939 and 1959 will fail to recognise what is being described in passages such as this: "Got ahead with the ironing and then felt I must go in quest of meat as that little chop left over from our Sunday joint will not make a very nourishing Shepherd's pie"; or "Yet middle class standards are somehow still kept up. Meals are eaten in the dining-room, though it would be less work to eat in the kitchen. The children still go out for a walk in the afternoon, but mother is now the nursemaid, and often has to furnish the housework when the children are in bed."

As the middle classes struggled to accommodate themselves to the new austerity, and the workers to the privations of even less bread and fewer homes, the country's new rulers planned their way to Utopia via Coventry's new city centre. As an evocation of an age that now seems as remote as the Renaissance, this is unsurpassed; as a portrait of the age which shaped much of modern Britain, it is also unsurpassed.
toegevoegd door John_Vaughan | bewerkThe Guardian (UK), John Charmley (Sep 17, 2015)
 

» Andere auteurs toevoegen

AuteursnaamRolType auteurWerk?Status
Kynaston, DavidAuteurprimaire auteuralle editiesbevestigd
Burns, MichaelAuthor photographSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
Hardy, BertCover photographsSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
Je moet ingelogd zijn om Algemene Kennis te mogen bewerken.
Voor meer hulp zie de helppagina Algemene Kennis .
Gangbare titel
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Oorspronkelijke titel
Alternatieve titels
Oorspronkelijk jaar van uitgave
Mensen/Personages
Belangrijke plaatsen
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Belangrijke gebeurtenissen
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Verwante films
Motto
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
This book is dedicated to Lucy
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Eleven a.m. on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, overheard by a Mass-Observation investigator at a newsagent's somewhere in central London.
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis. Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
(Klik om weer te geven. Waarschuwing: kan de inhoud verklappen.)
Ontwarringsbericht
Uitgevers redacteuren
Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing
Oorspronkelijke taal
Gangbare DDC/MDS
Canonieke LCC
Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices - vivid, unselfconscious, and 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 anyone's 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+) and Doris Lessing (newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling of poverty of post-war Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, the first volume of David Kynaston's ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.

Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden.

Boekbeschrijving
Haiku samenvatting

Actuele discussies

Geen

Populaire omslagen

Snelkoppelingen

Waardering

Gemiddelde: (4.1)
0.5
1
1.5
2 1
2.5 3
3 10
3.5 4
4 30
4.5 8
5 22

Ben jij dit?

Word een LibraryThing Auteur.

 

Over | Contact | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Voorwaarden | Help/Veelgestelde vragen | Blog | Winkel | APIs | TinyCat | Nagelaten Bibliotheken | Vroege Recensenten | Algemene kennis | 203,239,167 boeken! | Bovenbalk: Altijd zichtbaar