And it is an intimate portrait of the Thirties that Gardiner gives us, renowned for the Great Depression, strikes and hunger marches she shows that the Thirties were also a decade of growing wealth and increased leisure - for some at least. With her extensive use of personal accounts, memoir and media reports we hear from the people themselves - from Wigan Pier to Wimbledon, a portrait of a country undergoing huge change, a decade ticking down into yet another fatal World War.
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| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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J.B. Priestley famously described the 'three Englands' he saw in the 1930s: Old England, nineteenth-century England and the new, post-war England. Thirties Britain was, indeed, a land of contrasts, at once a nation rendered hopeless by the Depression, unemployment and international tensions, yet also a place of complacent suburban home-owners with a baby Austin in every garage. Now Juliet Gardiner, acclaimed author of the award-winning Wartime, provides 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 captures 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.
The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, History, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, History and Archaeology
The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain was written by Juliet Gardiner and published by HarperPress an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
