Martin Pugh makes the case that the 1950s and 1960s were shaped by changes in social attitudes that started to form in the 1920s and 1930s. These weren't the years of hunger and depravation - for most - that are sometimes imagined. For many people, they were a time of slight emancipation; for the first time, an increasing number of people outside of the privileged classes had some disposable income and were able to enjoy consumer goods, leisure time and even small luxuries. Pugh is very good on the rise of mass entertainment (especially radio and cinema) and particularly good on the changing role of women. Invited out of the home and into the workforce during the First World War many were very reluctant to be shuffled back into homemaker roles to accommodate men returning from the war. They were especially reluctant to take on domestic service, and Pugh has an excellent chapter on "the servant problem".

A very interesting social history of a rarely discussed period. Minus half a star for occasional repetition ( )

Really enjoyed Martin Pugh’s social history of Britain between the wars; it covers so much ground, but never in a dull or boring way. This book is totally engaging, with discussions on subjects as diverse as women’s suffrage, mass entertainment, motor transport, monarchy, and immigration, and all of them framed within a political context. It’s a long book – 500 pages – but I can honestly say it doesn’t feel like that, and it never drags. Pugh is a very readable historian, his work here being completely accessible to the general reader, but you never get the feeling that you’ve been short-changed or that he’s ‘dumbed-down’ the academic credibility of the work. My only real criticism is that it felt as though there was slightly more attention paid to the 1930s, as opposed to the 20s, and at times I felt I would have liked more detail on the earlier decade. An excellent read and highly recommended.
© Koplowitz 2012 ( )

I've dipped into this one on and off, looks like a very interesting read about inter-war britain and it's a book to keep in mind if I ever write anything about that period. I'm more interested in a discussion of inter-war fiction but that's not the emphasis of this book.