Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties - Softcover

Hennessy, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141004096 ISBN 13: 9780141004099

Publisher: Penguin, 2007

Synopsis

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Peter Hennessy's Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow of war into growing affluence.

The 1950s was the decade in which Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, Bill Haley released 'Rock Around the Clock', rationing ended and Britain embarked on the traumatic, disastrous Suez War.

In this highly enjoyable, original book, Peter Hennessy takes his readers into front rooms, classrooms, cabinet rooms and the new high-street coffee bars of Britain to recapture, as no previous history has, the feel, the flavour and the politics of this extraordinary time of change.

'Utterly engaging ... a treat. It breathes exhilaration'
  Libby Purves, The Times

'If the Gods gossip, this is how it would sound'
  Philip Ziegler, Spectator Books of the Year

'A particular treat ... fine, wise and meticulously researched'
  Andrew Marr

'Stands clear of the field as our best narrative history of this decisive decade'
  Peter Clarke, Sunday Times

'A compelling narrative ... Hennessy's love of the flesh and blood of politics breathes on every page'
  Tim Gardam, Observer

'The late Ben Pimlott once described Hennessy as "something of a national institution". You can forget the first two of those five words'
  Guardian

Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London, and the Director of the Mile End Institute of Contemporary British Government, Intelligence and Society. He is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes), Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (winner of the Orwell Prize); the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State.

About this title

Review:

Hennessy combines the balance and authority of a historian with the brilliantly selective eye of the investigative journalist ... if the Gods gossip this is how it would sound

Books of the Year (Philip Ziegler Spectator)

Synopsis:

"Having It So Good" evokes Britain emerging from the shadow of war and the privations of austerity and rationing into growing affluence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and now coffee bars of 1950s Britain - and also into the secret Cabinet rooms in which decisions about the British nuclear bomb were taken and plans made for the catastrophe of nuclear war. He brings to life the ageing Churchill, in his last faltering spell as Prime Minister, the highly-strung Anthony Eden taking his country to war in the teeth of American opposition and world opinion, and the rise of 'Supermac' Harold Macmillan, gliding over problems with his Edwardian insouciance. Above all, "Having It So Good" captures the smell and the flavour of an extraordinary decade in which affluence and anxiety combined to produce their own winds of change.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0141004096
• ISBN 13: 9780141004099
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 768