false 43872 0349115303 9780349115306 12 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170234997m/43872.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43872.Never_Had_It_So_Good_A_History_of_Britain_from_Suez_to_the_Beatles 24672 Dominic Sandbrook 29 5 4 1 false Thu Nov 12 05:49:24 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 16 09:21:46 -0800 2009
Sandbrook looks at the decade both politically and culturally, and the chapters pretty much split between the two. On the whole I think the political chapters are better value, just because there are more interesting points to unearth there. After all, if you’re writing about the origins of The Beatles, James Bond, or even Dr Who – as important as they were – there’s not much more fresh you can say about them. I’m not alone in knowing more about Decca’s assertion that guitar bands were finished or the hiring of Sean Connery, than I do about the Conservative party intrigues which saw Sir Alec Douglas Home become Prime Minister.

The various areas you’d expect to be covered are: angry young men, kitchen sink dramas, the dissolution of The Empire, the third man and Profumo, and the author does a wonderful job in bringing them to life. However many of the commentators are politicians or well known personalities, with a handful of ‘ordinary people’ sprinkled through the text. Although these voices are there, I’m not sure they’re used as skilfully as they are in David Kynaston’s similar ‘Austerity Britain’. (The follow up ‘Family Britain’ is on the shelves now and I’m looking forward to it). However ‘Never Had It So Good’ is a lively piece of history, which puts forward the convincing argument that as much as things seemed to change, Britain remained an incredibly conservative country. No matter what the TV footage shows of Carnaby Street, that was not the experience of the majority of the nation.

‘White Heat’ is the second volume and I will certainly read it soon.

Two anecdotes of this book which particularly made me smile:

Firstly, in 1962 as worries about teenagers spread “the London Union of Youth Clubs, ‘seeking to mould the citizens of tomorrow’, sent a hundred teenage girls on an ‘initiative test’ to spend the night at sea on a ship full of sailors. The point of this exercise was never entirely clear, but it takes little imagination to speculate that the evening did not unfold quite as the youth service would have wished.”

Secondly, at the start of the sixties, as the original rock’n’rollers were tamed – for Britain, we’re talking Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele – many commentators were convinced that the dominant musical style of the 1960s would be Trad Jazz, and that its proponents would be the stars of the decade. And then along came John, Paul, George and Ringo.]]>