Weekend Deviation – Kynaston’s Tales of a New Jerusalem Vol II

Anyone who read the first volume in historian David Kynaston’s Tales of a New Jerusalem series (a projected 3 volume history) – Austerity Britain, 1945-51, will know that the trilogy looks set to become a classic long read.  The first volume was a remarkable evocation of the immediate aftermath of the War and the foundation of the Welfare State under the Atlee government (hopefully it struck some chords – I note a company in the UK now selling WWAD T-shirts, a spin on the WWJD – what would Jesus do? – t-shirts – What Would Atlee Do?) and the thoughts and lives of the British population.

Well now the second volume is out – Family Britain, 1951-57 – and looks like a strong follow up with plenty of Kynaston’s trade mark evocative descriptions of people, places, popular culture and all that made Britain Britain during the period. As usual the blurb below:

‘As in Austerity Britain, an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices drive this 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; and, 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.’