chuntzy
6th May 2008, 02:59 PM
This was a very readable account of those three post-war years. It's social history that records people's feelings and reactions and not just about the new National Health Service, Education Acts and nationalisations of various industries.
Kynaston has used first-hand accounts of ordinary life at the time from sources such as Mass Observation (remember, for example, Nelly Last's jottings dramatised as Housewife 49 with Victoria Wood?), diaries, letters, newspapers etc. You realise class consciousness hadn't evaporated with the Second World War (not a surprise really) and that Labour voters were by no means socialists (another non-surprise).
People generally were quickly disappointed by how daily life was still such a struggle even three years after the war ended.
Kynaston has used first-hand accounts of ordinary life at the time from sources such as Mass Observation (remember, for example, Nelly Last's jottings dramatised as Housewife 49 with Victoria Wood?), diaries, letters, newspapers etc. You realise class consciousness hadn't evaporated with the Second World War (not a surprise really) and that Labour voters were by no means socialists (another non-surprise).
People generally were quickly disappointed by how daily life was still such a struggle even three years after the war ended.