Austerity Britain, 1945-48: A World to Build (Tales of a New Jerusalem, #1)

David Kynaston's Austerity Britain 1945-51 , the first book in his series Tales of a New Jerusalem , was a major Sunday Times bestseller in 2007. David Kynaston's Austerity Britain 1945-51 , the first book in his series Tales of a New Jerusalem , was a major Sunday Times bestseller in 2007. Beginning with VE Day and describing the first months of peace and the first years of Attlee's government, up to the launch of National Insurance and the NHS on 5 July 1948, this first book of Kynaston's much-acclaimed series Tales of a New Jerusalem records the reactions of the British people to the austerity of the early post-war years and to wider events such as Hiroshima, the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the arrival of the Empire Windrush. Here is the first volume from this landmark book covering 1945-48. Beginning his ground breaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents our nation through the eyes of those who lived there. Meet Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, struggling daily with food rationing; Henry St. John, a self-serving civil servant in Bristol; and, the young Glenda Jackson, taking her 11-plus. Using mass observation, diaries, letters, newspapers and magazines from the time, "A World to Build" is an unsurpassed social history: intensely evocative to those who were there and eye-opening for their children and grandchildren. Here is the first volume from this landmark book covering 1945-48. Beginning his ground breaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents our nation through the eyes of those who lived there. Meet Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, struggling daily with food rationing; Henry St. John, a self-serving civil servant in Bristol; and, the young Glenda Jackson, taking her 11-plus. Using mass observation, diaries, letters, newspapers and magazines from the time, "A World to Build" is an unsurpassed social history: intensely evocative to those who were there and eye-opening for their children and grandchildren.