Download or read book Austerity Britain 1945 1951 written by David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II, and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, and compellingly readable, account of the following six years, during which the country rebuilt itself. Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle the country's experience from bottom to top: coursing through through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voices, eloquently and passionately evincing the country's remarkable spirit. Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, gamely endures the tribulations of rationing; Mary King, a retired schoolteacher in Birmingham, observes how well-fed the Queen looks during a royal visit; Henry St. John, a persnickety civil servant in Bristol, is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own. Together they present a portrait of an indomitable people and Kynaston skillfully links their stories to bigger events thought the country. Their stories also jostle alongside those of more well-known figures like celebrated journalist-to-be John Arlott (making his first radio broadcast), Glenda Jackson, and Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa and struck by the leveling poverty of post-war Britain. Kynaston deftly weaves into his story a sophisticated narrative of how the 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic, and social landscape for the next three decades.

Download or read book A World to Build written by David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury Paperbacks. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, A World to Build transports us effortlessly back to 1945. Through this candid collection of contemporary voices, the country s post-war social history is unveiled; no supermarkets, no teabags, capital punishment, levelling poverty. Meet Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, struggling daily with food rationing; Henry St. John, a self-serving civil servant in Bristol; Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa to a country pre-multiculturalism. David Kynaston expertly weaves the histories of ordinary people and well-known figures alongside Britain's changing political and economic landscape, delivering a deeply researched and intensely readable account.

Download or read book Family Britain 1951 1957 written by David Kynaston and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-11-02 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family Britain continues David Kynaston's groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. 'The book is a marvel ... the level of detail is precise and fascinating' Sunday Telegraph 'A wonderfully illuminating picture of the way we were' The Times 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), 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.

Download or read book Smoke in the Valley 1948 51 written by David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury Paperbacks. This book was released on 2008 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing his groundbreaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents a breathtaking portrait of our nation through eyewitness accounts, newspapers of the time and previously unpublished diaries. Drawing on the everyday experiences of people from all walks of life, Smoke in the Valley covers the length and breadth of the country to tell its story. This is an unsurpassed social history- intensely evocative to those who were there and eye-opening for their children and grandchildren.

Download or read book Postwar written by Tony Judt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-05 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year “Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy. Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Download or read book Modernity Britain written by David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernity Britain, 1957-1963, continues David Kynaston's groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Download or read book Austerity in Britain written by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-05-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austerity in Britain is the first book to explore the entire episode of rationing, austerity, and fair shares from 1939 until 1955. These policies were central to the British war effort and to post-war reconstruction. The book analyses the connections between government policy, consumption, gender, and party politics during and after the Second World War. The economic background to austerity, the policy's administration, and changes in consumption standards are examined. Rationing resulted in at times extensive black markets and popular attitudes to the policy ranged from wartime acquiescence to post-war discontent. Austerity in Britain qualifies the myth of common sacrifice on the home front and highlights the limitations of the fair-shares policy which failed to achieve genuine equality between classes or between men and women. The continuation of rationing and austerity policies after 1945 was central to party politics. Disaffection, particularly among women, undermined Labour's popularity while the Conservatives' critique of austerity was instrumental to the party's victories at the general elections of 1951 and 1955.

Download or read book Debtors Prison written by Robert Kuttner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government—“austerity”—is the solution to a persisting economic crisis like ours or Europe’s, now in its fifth year. Since the collapse of September 2008, the conversation about economic recovery has centered on the question of debt: whether we have too much of it, whose debt to forgive, and how to cut the deficit. These questions dominated the sound bites of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the fiscal-cliff debates, and the perverse policies of the European Union. Robert Kuttner makes the most powerful argument to date that these are the wrong questions and that austerity is the wrong answer. Blending economics with historical contrasts of effective debt relief and punitive debt enforcement, he makes clear that universal belt-tightening, as a prescription for recession, defies economic logic. And while the public debt gets most of the attention, it is private debts that crashed the economy and are sandbagging the recovery—mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing to make up for lagging wages, speculative shortfalls incurred by banks. As Kuttner observes, corporations get to use bankruptcy to walk away from debts. Homeowners and small nations don’t. Thus, we need more public borrowing and investment to revive a depressed economy, and more forgiveness and reform of the overhang of past debts. In making his case, Kuttner uncovers the double standards in the politics of debt, from Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe’s campaign for debt forgiveness in the seventeenth century to the two world wars and Bretton Woods. Just as debtors’ prisons once prevented individuals from surmounting their debts and resuming productive life, austerity measures shackle, rather than restore, economic growth—as the weight of past debt crushes the economy’s future potential. Above all, Kuttner shows how austerity serves only the interest of creditors—the very bankers and financial elites whose actions precipitated the collapse. Lucid, authoritative, provocative—a book that will shape the economic conversation and the search for new solutions.

Download or read book Britain at Bay written by Alan Allport and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From statesmen and military commanders to ordinary Britons, a bold, sweeping history of Britain's entrance into World War II—and its efforts to survive it—illuminating the ways in which the war permanently transformed a nation and its people “Might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written.” —The Wall Street Journal Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict’s first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles pressing questions such as whether the war could have been avoided, how it could have been lost, how well the British lived up to their own values, and ultimately, what difference the war made to the fate of the nation. In answering these questions, he reexamines our assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which the Second World War transformed British culture and society. This bracing account draws on a lively cast of characters—from the political and military leaders who made the decisions, to the ordinary citizens who lived through them—in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. A sweeping and groundbreaking epic, Britain at Bay gives us a fresh look at the opening years of the war, and illuminates the integral moments that, for better or for worse, made Britain what it is today.

Download or read book Who Governs Britain written by Anthony King and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British system has been radically transformed in recent decades, far more than most of us realise. As acclaimed political scientist and bestselling author Anthony King shows, this transformation lies at the heart of British politics today. Imagining - or pretending - that the British political system and Britain's place in the world have not greatly changed, our political leaders consistently promise more than they can perform. Political and economic power is now widely dispersed both inside and outside the UK, but Westminster politicians still talk the language of Attlee and Churchill. How exactly has the British system changed? Where does power now lie? In Who Governs Britain?, King offers the first assessment in many years of Britain's governing arrangements as a whole, providing much needed context for the 2015 general election.

Download or read book George Osborne written by Janan Ganesh and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ganesh's dissection of what has driven the intellectual and political revival of the Tories is forensic and incisive."- Anne McElvoy, Mail on Sunday"A lively account of the Chancellor's career ... contains a great deal of fascinating new information."- Peter Oborne, Daily Telegraph George Osborne is the most controversial Chancellor of the Exchequer since the Second World War. His austere policies have incited international debate, and his political influence over the government provokes resentment. He is also a survivor with an eye on the premiership. Having authored the most hated Budget of recent times, he now presides over a recovering economy.This is the story of Osborne's breathless ascent to power: a journey driven by luck, guile, resilience, daring and ferocious ambition. As a back-room adviser, MP and Cabinet member, he has enjoyed a starring role or front-row seat at all the Tory dramas since the fall of Thatcher and the dog days of the Major government, from the party's long years in opposition to its eventual and incomplete resurrection. Yet rarely have voters known so little about a politician with such sway over their lives and livelihoods.Fully updated to include Osborne's role in the economic recovery, his appointment of Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of England, and his prospects as a future Prime Minister, this biography makes sense of a man who is both a personal enigma and a political machine. Based on exhaustive research and access to the innermost parts of the government, it tells the story of George Osborne and the era he has helped to shape.

Download or read book City of London written by David Kynaston and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'Square Mile', London's financial powerhouse, rose to prominence with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. David Kynaston's vibrant history brings this world to life, taking us from the railway boom of the 1830s to the 'Golden Age', when the legendary gold standard reigned supreme. Between the two World Wars the City was affected by the Wall Street Crash, pressured by politicians, trade unions and industrialists, but by the end of the twentieth century it had regained a precarious global might. Woven throughout are the stories of four individuals who shaped the City in different ways -- Nathan Rothschild, Ernest Cassel, Montagu Norman and Siegmund Warburg. But the realm of great bankers and brokers is also the workplace of young clerks throwing paper darts, typists bringing in their sandwiches, and sad racketeers watching aghast as the markets fall. Above all, we see what it was like to work in the City -- the dress codes, eating habits, work hours, pay, humour, changing architecture and language that forged the unique culture of the Square Mile. Richly entertaining, full of vivid anecdotes, this is a story of booms, busts and bankruptcies -- from the Kaffir boom to the Marconi scandal, the 'Big Bang' deregulation of 1986, and the Barings crash in 1995 -- bringing us to the brink of the modern age.

Download or read book End This Depression Now written by Paul Krugman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times best-selling call to arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman. The Great Recession is more than four years old—and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—remain in a state of intense pain." How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions with his characteristic lucidity and insight. He has a powerful message for anyone who has suffered over these past four years—a quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the "intellectual clarity and political will" to end this depression now.

Download or read book The Memory Chalet written by Tony Judt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-11-11 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year “[A] tremendously moving memorial to a first-class historian and essayist . . . humane, fearless, unsparingly honest.” —The Financial Times “[A] memorable collection from a memorable man.” —BookPage "It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head." —Tony Judt The Memory Chalet is a memoir unlike any you have ever read before. Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt's prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the divergent sex politics of Europe, before concluding that his generation "was a revolutionary generation, but missed the revolution." A series of road trips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship. Foods and trains and long-lost smells all compete for Judt's attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an elegant arc of analysis. All as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet-a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.

Download or read book The Neoliberal Age written by Aled Davies and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are commonly characterised as an age of ‘neoliberalism’ in which individualism, competition, free markets and privatisation came to dominate Britain’s politics, economy and society. This historical framing has proven highly controversial, within both academia and contemporary political and public debate. Standard accounts of neoliberalism generally focus on the influence of political ideas in reshaping British politics; according to this narrative, neoliberalism was a right-wing ideology, peddled by political economists, think-tanks and politicians from the 1930s onwards, which finally triumphed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Neoliberal Age? suggests this narrative is too simplistic. Where the standard story sees neoliberalism as right-wing, this book points to some left-wing origins, too; where the standard story emphasises the agency of think-tanks and politicians, this book shows that other actors from the business world were also highly significant. Where the standard story can suggest that neoliberalism transformed subjectivities and social lives, this book illuminates other forces which helped make Britain more individualistic in the late twentieth century. The analysis thus takes neoliberalism seriously but also shows that it cannot be the only explanatory framework for understanding contemporary Britain. The book showcases cutting-edge research, making it useful to researchers and students, as well as to those interested in understanding the forces that have shaped our recent past.

Download or read book Engines of Privilege written by David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Thoroughly researched and written with such calm authority, yet makes you want to scream with righteous indignation' John O'Farrell 'We can expect the manifesto-writers at the next general election to pass magpie-like over these chapters ... The appeal to act is heartfelt' Financial Times ___________________ Includes a new chapter, 'Moving Ahead?' Britain's private, fee-paying schools are institutions where children from affluent families have their privileges further entrenched through a high-quality, richly-resourced education. Engines of Privilege contends that, in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity, of fairness and of social cohesion, the educational apartheid separating private schools from our state schools deploys our national educational resources unfairly; blocks social mobility; reproduces privilege down the generations; and underpins a damaging democratic deficit in our society. Francis Green and David Kynaston carefully examine options for change, while drawing on the valuable lessons of history. Clear, vigorous prose is combined with forensic analysis to powerful effect, illuminating the painful contrast between the importance of private schools in British society and the near-absence of serious, policy-shaping debate. ___________________ 'An excoriating account of the inequalities perpetuated by Britain's love affair with private schools' The Times

Download or read book The Disinformation Age written by W. Lance Bennett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.