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Average Customer Rating:

A disappointment

Customer Rating:

I had high expectations for this book. The concept sounded great and the publicity had been very favourable. But a couple of chapters in I began to feel disappointed, and then angry and frustrated. Kynaston uses his source material in a shamelessly partisan fashion. Nothing unusual about that for a historian, perhaps, but here the narrative is so one-sided as to subtract almost all credibility from the text. It's fine for him to believe the post-war Labour government actually did the country more harm than good...but for him to imply (on the basis of very limited surveys and testimonies) almost the entire population felt the same way is preposterous. Reading this book you'd think most of the UK were ignorant, backward whingers who hated all politicians. Saying that, he doesn't even attempt to represent the whole of the UK, despite the 'Austerity Britain' title. Northern Ireland isn't mentioned once. Scotland is confined to a few pages about Glasgow. There's a south east/midlands bias which is really unsubtle. Certain passages are useful from a purely empirical point of view. Overall, though, this is a flawed attempt at what could, and should, have been an impressive work. If you want the definitive history of this period, read Peter Hennessy.