Joining the Dots

‘An accomplished and intensely evocative memoir … A journey of courage and determination … Joining the Dots … will become in time an integral part of our understanding of postwar Britain’ Daniel Kynaston, Books of the Year, Observer

How has Britain changed – politically, economically, socially and culturally – in the postwar era? Both lyrical and personal, social historian Juliet Gardiner’s memoir Joining the Dots is the accessible and empowering living history of a mid-twentieth-century woman who grew into a world so different from the one she was born into. The book is also a wider study of class, sexual choice, motherhood and marriage, feminism, family planning and professional ambition. An essential read for anyone interested in gender equality and modern history.

Reviews

‘An accomplished and intensely evocative memoir that will become in time an integral part of our understanding of post-war Britain. It is also, at a personal level, a journey of courage and determination’ Books of the Year, David Kynaston, Observer

‘Refreshingly unconcerned with self-excavation … the beauty of the book is in its flow from the particular to the general… the vast consolation and pleasure of this generous book is its conviction that we are all more than one life allows’ TLS

‘Gardiner has, in this remarkable and moving book, joined the dots’ Daily Telegraph

‘Gardiner's riveting memoir should be compulsory reading for any woman born in the last seventy or so years … what she does so engagingly well here is to tell her own highly personal story, then set it in contemporary context … Gardiner has given us in Joining the Dots another volume of utterly compelling and insightful social history about the century we have recently emerged from’ Literary Review

‘Juliet Gardiner is well known for her superbly researched books on slices of British social history … in this short memoir … she turns the spotlight on her own story. It’s every bit as fascinating as her wider works’ Country Life

‘In this lyrical, perceptive book, Gardiner “joins the dots” in a memoir that describes life from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s’ Sunday Express

’Riveting…touchingly frank…this fascinating, well-written book, is excellent’ Oldie

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’.