The Thirties: An Intimate History
Juliet Gardiner
The Thirties: An Intimate History
Thirties Britain was a land of contrasts, at once a nation rendered hopeless by the global Depression, unemployment and international tensions, yet also a place of complacent suburban home-owners with a Baby Austin in every garage. With this book Juliet Gardiner aims to provide a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade, bringing the complex experience of thirties Britain alive through newspapers, magazines, memoirs, letters and diaries. Gardiner tries to capture the essence of a people part-mesmerised by 'modernism' in architecture, art and the proliferation of 'dream palaces', by the cult of fitness and fresh air, the obsession with speed, the growth and regimentation of leisure, the democratisation of the countryside, the celebration of elegance, glamour and sensation. Yet, at the same time, this was a nation imbued with a pervasive awareness of loss – of Britain's influence in the world, of accepted political, social and cultural signposts, and finally of peace itself.
4.2 out of 5 based on 9 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
History |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
944 |
| RRP |
£30.00 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-0007240760 |
| Publisher |
HarperPress |
| |
Thirties Britain was a land of contrasts, at once a nation rendered hopeless by the global Depression, unemployment and international tensions, yet also a place of complacent suburban home-owners with a Baby Austin in every garage. With this book Juliet Gardiner aims to provide a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade, bringing the complex experience of thirties Britain alive through newspapers, magazines, memoirs, letters and diaries. Gardiner tries to capture the essence of a people part-mesmerised by 'modernism' in architecture, art and the proliferation of 'dream palaces', by the cult of fitness and fresh air, the obsession with speed, the growth and regimentation of leisure, the democratisation of the countryside, the celebration of elegance, glamour and sensation. Yet, at the same time, this was a nation imbued with a pervasive awareness of loss – of Britain's influence in the world, of accepted political, social and cultural signposts, and finally of peace itself.
Read an extract from the book | Daily Mail
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Dominic Sandbrook
"Some readers may find the feast rather too gargantuan, especially as she downplays the kind of political narrative that might keep them turning the pages. All the same, for the depth of its research, the quality of the writing and the sheer richness and vibrancy of the material, this is a quite outstanding work of social history. From architecture to the abdication, from zeppelins to zoos, it is comfortably the definitive account of a decade that has been much maligned, but which now looks like the crucible in which modern Britain was born."
11/02/2010
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The Spectator
Judith Flanders
"The Thirties is a splendid overview, a detailed, absorbing read; it is astute yet non-judgmental, comprehensive yet not daunting. George Orwell described the year 1938 as ‘a scenic ride to catastrophe’. The same metaphor could describe the decade, and with Juliet Gardiner as our driver, readers could not be in safer hands in the tour of a lifetime."
20/02/2010
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The Times
Philip Hoare
"Enthralling … The greatest tribute to Gardiner’s book is that it doesn’t read as history, more a vibrant, nuanced narrative of the lives lived by our immediate predecessors. I’d like to think that my own parents would have picked up this masterly tome and nodded in recognition at every page."
13/02/2010
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The Sunday Times
Richard Davenport-Hines
"Excellent … she has mastered a vast number of written sources, and the resulting synthesis is also a work of graceful, eloquent historical imagination… Gardiner’s book is subtitled An Intimate History, which means that, regrettably, she downplays the institutions that instilled personal discipline or enforced communal rules. Religion is skimped over."
11/02/2010
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The New Statesman
Francis Beckett
"Gardiner's huge and comprehensive book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand [the 1930s]. It is also easy reading, as it is written with luminous clarity."
04/03/2010
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The Literary Review
Piers Brendon
"The Thirties is full of gems ... but they are not strung together to form a thesis. There is no analytical framework, no conclusion. The book is a tessellated pavement without cement. Since the function of the historian is to interpret the evidence, this is a fundamental flaw. On the other hand, Juliet Gardiner has mustered between hard covers a staggering amount of raw material about what it was like for individuals to live through Auden’s ‘low dishonest decade’. It’s a heroic feat and it has the merit of letting readers judge for themselves."
01/03/2010
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The Mail on Sunday
Craig Brown
"It was said of George Orwell that he could not blow his nose without moralising on the state of the handkerchief industry. Likewise, it might be said of Juliet Gardiner that she cannot blow her nose without first researching the statistics for just how many times it has been blown in the past decade ... There are times when such devotion to figures threatens to transgress the border between the scholarly and the heavygoing; on the other hand, Gardiner's steady, number-crunching approach could be said to provide necessary ballast to the wilder and more opinionated approaches of other, less deadpan historians."
14/02/2010
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The Independent on Sunday
DJ Taylor
"…Gardiner's forte is her eye for detail. At a whopping 950 pages, The Thirties misses practically nothing… All that The Thirties lacks, as one jam-packed paragraph succeeds another, is much in the way of synthesis."
11/02/2010
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The Observer
Lara Feigel
"The downside of telling history through stories is that the reader has to work harder to deduce the interpretative judgments at work. If there is an overall thesis in this book, it is that the 1930s was a messier and more multifarious decade than is often supposed. In his 2009 book about the interwar years, Richard Overy characterised the 1930s as a "morbid age" much like our own. Gardiner, too, sees this era of financial and international crises as peculiarly relevant today, but rightly reminds us that the 1930s could be both hopeful and pleasurable."
11/02/2010
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