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In a season that has seen the price of gas reach so high that Americans have begun actually taking the bus, and the price of food soar enough that Burpee's sales of garden seeds have doubled, David Kynaston's new account of postwar Britain is equal parts timely, fascinating, and a little eerie.
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It is also—and we might as well get this out of the way at the start—almost endless. Kynaston's technique is collage—he mixes high and low, housewife diary and parliamentary debate—and he leaves very little out. For the older Briton, for whom the names of comedians and TV presenters and cricket heroes will be familiar, there is probably much digressive pleasure here. For those of us who dimly recognize the occasional name (Benny Hill as a young comedian), the effort is perhaps more to be admired than enjoyed. A hundred pages per year turns out to be a lot, but for those willing to take the time, the effect does yield both insight and a deep confidence in Kynaston's judgment on important matters. One hopes more American historians will follow his noble lead.
Britain had, of course, won the war—borne the blood, tears, and sweat necessary to rally the free world to its side. But unlike the United States, it had precious little to show for the victory. The war ended not with a rush of prosperity but with a renewed onslaught of rationing, this time without any of the wartime fervor that had made it more palatable in the years of the Blitz. Kynaston begins his account with VE Day, which he describes as fairly sedate in most corners of the country: "Most people were neither depressed nor ecstatic; rather they took the two days in their stride, reflected upon them to a greater or lesser extent, and above all tried to have a good time." Festivities over, most people returned to the quiet task of making do. Kynaston quotes from the diary of a minor civil servant, Anthony Heap: "housing, food, clothing, fuel, beer, tobacco—all the ordinary comforts of life that we'd taken for granted before the war and naturally expected to become more plentiful again when it ended, became instead more and more scarce and difficult to come by." Of 1945, Heap said, "I can remember few years I've been happier to see the end of."
In the face of this disruption, which followed not only on the war but on the depression that came before, and in a world where socialism seemed ascendant, the great political questions of the day concerned just how strongly the government would take control of the economy. When present-day Americans reflect that Churchill, triumphant in war, was immediately removed from office by British voters ticking Labour on their ballots, they tend to regard it as incredible ingratitude. But for the hard-pressed working class, and much of the middle-class as well, it made both historic and pragmatic sense. "Oh, wonderful people of Britain," a young Iris Murdoch wrote in a letter to a friend. "After all the ballyhoo and eyewash, they've had the guts to vote against Winston! I can't help feeling that to be young is very heaven!" And so, in the next few years, the government undertook those projects that seemed so obvious everywhere except the United States: the provision of a national health service, and the building of hundreds of thousands of units of public housing, often in the largeish tracts that the English call "council estates."
One of the great virtues of Kynaston's method is that, unlike a traditional political historian, he is able to gauge how much attention ordinary people were actually paying to politics. And the answer is, surprisingly little. Though the radio was on constantly in most houses, with 77 percent of the populace listening at all three meals (and upstart TV was proving equally addictive for those who could afford it), the BBC stayed away from political controversy: discussion was barred of any matter due to be debated in Parliament in the next fortnight. And Kynaston has read enough diaries to know how minor a role politics often played, at least compared to the difficulties of obtaining eggs, or even dried egg powder.
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