A Northern Wind: Britain 1962–65
(Bloomsbury) is the latest instalment in David Kynaston’s ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ series. This book charts the midpoint between the Attlee government’s reconstruction of Britain and building of a welfare state, and the Thatcher government’s deconstruction of this postwar consensus, covering themes including education, health, labour relations and the shifting identity politics of the 1960s. The real strength of the book, and the series, is Kynaston’s focus on the voices from below. Drawing on a daunting array of diaries, letters and cultural ephemera ranging from the most pop to the highest brow, the book frames history through the ordinary person’s experience.