Tales of a New Jerusalem – serie

This edition collects both volumes of Modernity Britain for the first timeFollowing Austerity Britain and Family Britain, the third volume in David Kynaston's landmark social history of post-war Britain'Triumphant ... A historian of peerless sensitivity and curiosity about the lives of individuals' Financial Times'This superb history captures the birth pangs of modern Britain ... It is a part of Kynaston’s huge achievement that such moments of insight and pleasure should accompany what has become a monumental history of our recent past' The Times____________________David Kynaston’s history of post-war Britain has so far taken us from the radically reforming Labour governments of the late 1940s in Austerity Britain and through the growing prosperity of Family Britain’s more placid 1950s. Now Modernity Britain 1957–62 sees the coming of a new Zeitgeist as Kynaston gets up close to a turbulent era in which the speed of social change accelerated. The late 1950s to early 1960s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the ‘never had it so good’ years, when the Carry On film series got going, and films like Room at the Top and the first soaps like Coronation Street and Z Cars brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when CND galvanised the progressive middle class; when ‘youth’ emerged as a cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; and when ‘meritocracy’ became the buzz word of the day. In this period, the traditional norms of morality were perceived as under serious threat (Lady Chatterley’s Lover freely on sale after the famous case), and traditional working-class culture was changing (wakes weeks in decline, the end of the maximum wage for footballers).The greatest change, though, concerned urban redevelopment: city centres were being yanked into the age of the motor car, slum clearance was intensified, and the skyline became studded with brutalist high-rise blocks. Some of this transformation was necessary, but too much would destroy communities and leave a harsh, fateful legacy.This profoundly important story of the transformation of Britain as it arrived at the brink of a new world is brilliantly told through diaries, letters newspapers and a rich haul of other sources and published in one magnificent paperback volume for the first time.

A TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF 2022------------------'Glorious ... It's rare to read anything so teeming with life' SPECTATOR, Books of the Year'This is Kynaston at his best ... A rich and vivid picture of a nation in all its human complexity' IAN JACK'A compulsive read ... Generous as well as sharp' MARGARET DRABBLE'I was captivated by its brilliance' D. J. TAYLOR__________________The ‘real’ Sixties began on 5 October 1962. On that remarkable Friday, the Beatles hit the world with their first single, ‘Love Me Do’, and the first James Bond film, Dr No, had its world premiere in London: two icons of the future heralding a social and cultural revolution.On the Cusp, continuing David Kynaston’s groundbreaking history of post-war Britain, takes place during the summer and early autumn of 1962, in the charged months leading up to the moment that a country changed. The Rolling Stones’ debut at the Marquee Club, the last Gentlemen versus Players match at Lord’s, the issue of Britain’s relationship with Europe starting to divide the country, Telstar the satellite beaming live TV pictures across the world, ‘Telstar’ the record a siren call to a techno future – these were months thick with incident, all woven together here with an array of fresh contemporary sources, including diarists both famous and obscure.Britain would never be the same again after these months. Sometimes indignant, sometimes admiring, always empathetic, On the Cusp evokes a world of seaside holidays, of church fetes, of Steptoe andSon – a world still of seemingly settled social and economic certainties, but in fact on the edge of fundamental change.___________________'Sparkles with voices from a vanished world ... An entrancing representation, full of exquisite detail' KATE WILLIAMS'What a joy it has been to find myself wholly immersed in the richness of Kynaston's account ... Thrilling' JULIET NICOLSON

The early sixties in Britain told as only David Kynaston ('the most entertaining historian alive' Spectator) can. Running from 1962 to 1965, A Northern Wind is the anticipated new volume in the landmark ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ series.'From Daleks and dingy tower blocks to nuclear threats, this addictively readable book charts dizzying change . . . Sometimes moving, often comic, always fascinating'DOMINIC SANDBROOK, SUNDAY TIMESHow much can change in two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of Liverpool's the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors.A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston’s acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston’s masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill – while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history.Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC’s controversial That Was The Week That Was; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham’s Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional and immersive, Tales of a New Jerusalem has transformed how we see and understand post-war Britain. A Northern Wind continues the journey.A WATERSTONES, TIMES, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR'Magnificent . . . The early Sixties have never been recounted so well' THE TIMES, BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A breathtaking array of treasures . . . A book to savour' TLS'Extraordinarily atmospheric, capturing more than anything a sense of what this moment might have felt like to live through' FINANCIAL TIMES'Kynaston is the most humane and even-handed chronicler of our time, and the one best-qualified to carry this mightily compelling national story onwards' OBSERVER