The Thirties

Acclaimed author of 'Wartime', Juliet Gardiner, brings to life the long neglected decade of the twentieth century – the 1930s.

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.

Reviews

Reviews for “Wartime”:

“Juliet Gardiner’s Wartime, vibrantly captures, through personal accounts and vast research, what Britain was like under the siege, while at the same time giving a clear picture of the wider war in which its servicemen and women fought. She summons up the atmosphere and the emotions of the time vividly” Daily Mail

“It’s all here in Juliet Gardiner’s ambitious new study of life in wartime Britain. A minor monument of scholarship, this book is big in both size and scope, but biggest of all in terms of sheer exhilarating readability”
The Scotsman

About the author

Juliet Gardiner is a respected commentator on British social history from the Victorian times through to the 1950s. She was Editor of History Today magazine and is also the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling ‘Wartime’.