Austerity Britain, 1945-1951

By David Kynaston

This edition collects both volumes of Austerity Britain together for the first time

'This is a classic; buy at least three copies - one for yourself and two to give to friends and family' Guardian

The first book in the groundbreaking series that tells the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the coming of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 as never before

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 poverty of postwar 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781408809075

David Kynaston

David Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written eighteen books, including The City of London (1994-2001), a widely acclaimed four-volume history, and WG's Birthday Party, an account of the Gentleman v. Players match at Lord's in July 1898. He is the author of Austerity Britain 1945-51 and Family Britain 1951-57, the first two titles in a series of books covering the history of post-war Britain (1945-1979) under the collective title 'Tales of a New Jerusalem'. He is currently a visiting professor at Kingston University.

Reviews for Austerity Britain, 1945-1951

[paul.bentley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bombed-out and bankrupt, Britain remained a blindly optimistic place in 1945, so much so that it elected a Labour government once the war was done. The British Empire's victory over the Axis powers had been facilitated by an unprecedented expansion of the machinery of the state. The wartime experience of ruthlessly centralised economic planning seemed to have demonstrated the feasibility of the socialist model of societal organisation. Sadly for the elected Attlee government, the transferral of wartime planning to peacetime redevelopment exposed the weakness of their Keynesian model almost immediately. What had worked in an exemplary fashion in the desperate times that had engaged the majority of the population in a united endeavour against Nazism, fell to pieces in the hope of liberation from hardship that the war's end engendered. Expecting the fruits of victory, the British populace in fact experienced more of the same economic misery that war had brought, but with added left-wing preaching about how wonderful was the communitarian experiment that Attlee tried to impose. David Kynaston aggregates a remarkably wide array of sources to contrast the grinding frustration and glorious innocence of the period. Sir Cliff Richard's childhood memories of homelessness rub up against Janet Street-Porter's wide-eyed recollections of visiting the nation's first launderettes. Beneath the amusing quotes is an engaging examination of that first socialist government's failure to build enough houses, its failure to sustain a wholly free National Health Service, its surprisingly cack-handed labour relations and its bizarre attachment to the imperial ideals that the Labour Party had spent the 'thirties decrying. It's a remarkably satisfying study of a formative time in British history.

[brucecoulson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found Kynaston's account of the first six post-war years to be highly informative, but I was left with the impression that he was writing primarily for an English audience. Peppered throughout the book are comments, snide observations, and recollections from a variety of people who clearly would be known to a U.K. reader, but left me constantly asking (and researching ) "Just who is this and why are they included?" Still, an excellent account of the Labor's governments effort to re-make England, and the failures (and a few successes) of that work.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very rich, multi-layered account of life in Britain in the immediate post-war years, covering the years of the reforming Attlee Government, starting from VE day and ending in spring of 1951 just after the death of Ernest Bevin. It covers all aspects: political, economic, social, cultural, sporting, etc. There are many quotes from interviews taking place as part of the wonderful Mass Observation programme, as well as a lot of quotes from other sources, all of which cumulatively show the rich textures of life, the frustrations with austerity and deprivation even after years of peace, mixed with, for many, a real feeling that a marvellous new social direction had been undertaken, with the creation of the NHS and the welfare state and a feeling that mass unemployment had been banished forever. It was, in retrospect certainly, an era of ideological certainty and great hope for a better future, though the very granular picture shown in this book demonstrates that, as so often, hindsight oversimplifies the situation and gives to a whole era a plain gloss that masks the contradictions and complexities that always lie beneath. This is the first book of a projected series of six volumes covering the period 1945-79, the period during which the post-war consensus in favour of the welfare state more or less held firm. It promises to be a fascinating ride through this crucial period of modern history. 5/5

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

David Kynaston takes a very simple, but effective approach, to his social history of Britain in the immediate post war years. He has scanned the newspapers and magazines of the day, read the diaries of the famous and the not so famous, made a lot of use of Mass Observation and the nascent public opinion polling of the day to construct both a people's narrative of 1945 to 1951 but also to explore in more depth issues such as nationalisation, the setting up of the welfare state, women in the workplace, urban planning and reconstruction and others. All of which makes it highly readable, and one is struck both by the conservatism of British society (even though a reformist, overtly Socialist Labour government was elected to power in 1945) and the determination to create social justice (The New Jerusalem of the title) in Britain with scant regard for the situation in Britain's many colonies. Indeed one of the most striking arguments put forward in the book is that an early abandonment of the colonial project and deployment of the resources it took up into trade and industry may have resulted in Britain at least maintaining its pre war position as one of the great powers, rather than standing by as that preeminence gradually dribbled away If there are any criticisms of this work, it is probably reflects the sources available to Kyanaston. There is no mention of Northern Ireland, little of Wales (other than the South Wales collieries) and little of the northern parts of England. Scotland is mainly discussed in the context of the urban planning of Glasgow But as I say, this may be due to a lack of sources from those areas. What is a little more puzzling is a lack of discussion of the reintegration into society of demobilised servicemen - surely a key issue of the time? But none the less an excellent history, I am looking forward to reading Family Britain, the next volume

[abdoujaparov · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A social and political history very much in the vein of Peter Hennessy's Never Again, Austerity Britain is a thoroughly researched, fascinating and immersive journey through a difficult time in British history. By using the diaries of both notable people (politicians and the like) and of ordinary citizens, and the wealth of social research carried out by Mass Observation, he gives a very personal account of rationing (worse than during the war), housing and urban planning, nationalisation, education, the creation of the NHS, and all the other notable achievements and near-misses of the Atlee government.The subject matter is fascinating. The UK had emerged victorious from WWII, but the price paid was enormous. As the title suggests, the quality of life in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the war was scarcely better than during it. There were crippling shortages of housing, food, and during the historically bad winter of 46/46, of electricity generation. Britons who bore the burden stoically during wartime were rather less accepting after the war was over. In fact, my favourite aspect of the book was finding out that 1940s Britons complained just as much as 2010's Britons, and in many cases about the same things - the weather, immigration, politicians, employment, crime, the supposed wildness of youths. Reactionary Daily Mail readers come from a renewable source, apparently.I'll have to wait until I've read Kynaston's second book in this series to find out if the 1950s was the golden age we're led to believe, but I can safely conclude that the latter half of the 1940s certainly wasn't. It was optimistic, to begin with at least, but hard.The one criticism I have, that costs the book a fifth star, is that it tends to feel unstructured. Anecdote leads into anecdote, quote into quote, often without feeling as if a point is being made.

[etxgardener · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An absolutely brilliant social/political history of Britain in the first five years after World War II. David Kynaston covers everything from the political skirmishes within the Labor & Tory parties, to who were the outstanding sports figures of the day. In-between he draws a vivid picture of just how hard life was for the average Britain when, instead of being able to enjoy their victory in the war, they were faced with continuing shortages, rationing and sub-standard housing.This is the first book in a series that is planned to take Britain through the Thatcher years and I, for one, am looking forward to reading his subsequent books.

[delphica · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

t was hard to rate this book, it is FULL of information, but it's hard to imagine sitting down and reading it through and being riveted. It feels a lot like a textbook. I'm giving it four stars for usefulness, but it's more like a mild three for reading pleasure.Allegedly, this is the first in a series of 6 (and this is an enormous book on its own) of Kynaston's history of Britain after WWII. He organizes the chapters by theme, and then the bulk of the information is first-hand contemporary accounts of the issues, mostly from diaries and letters. Rationing, the rise of the Labour party, the miners' strikes... the best thing about this is that if you are the kind of non-British person who reads a lot of novels written in England during this time, it sheds a lot of light on passing references to events and people that may otherwise elude American readers. I confess I ended up skimming a lot about the miners, and giving more attention to Princess Elizabeth's wedding and the arrival of the New Look.Overall, it is heavy on the politics and the economy, and a little light on domestic issues, which was disappointing to me personally, although shopping and menus made frequent appearances.Grade: It's very texty. I'm giving it a B.Recommended: Mostly as a reference tool.

[bruchu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Redistributionism in Postwar BritainIn this ambitious narrative, British Historian David Kynaston attempts to reconstruct the lives of Britons after the end of WWII. In many ways, life after the war was just as hard maybe harder than it was during the war. There were some celebrations, but mostly a somber realization of what lay ahead.Much of Kynaston's book is focused on the newly elected Labour government under Clement Atlee and their attempts to introduce and implement the welfare state, the beginnings of democratic socialism and the debates over nationalization of public services. The largest and most significant of course being the creation of the National Health Service. Kynaston also describes the many high-modernist urban projects to modernize the cities and suburbanize.Kynaston weaves through a variety of personal narratives documenting the major social, economic and political changes underway. I especially appreciated Kynaston's observations of the changing roles of women in postwar Britain. The debate over whether they should give up their jobs and return to their traditional domestic roles or whether they belonged permanently alongside men. How veterans coped and struggled to re-integrated into civil society. All throughout, Kynaston paints a picture of austerity, where the electricity went off and on, and how long the daily lineups for food were, the cleavages created by increasing immigration, and the coincidental timing of the harshest winter conditions in decades.The book is written in the traditional historical narrative and at over 600 pages, the book is a rather long read. I think that some of detail could have been paired down for the casual reader, but considering this is part of an anthology series, it is perfectly suitable for that purpose. Overall, I recommend the book for anyone who wants a detailed social history of England in the immediate postwar period.

[trotsky731 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.