Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 (History of Modern Britain, Book 4)
Dominic Sandbrook
Language: English
Pages: 1000
ISBN: B007JZVXUK
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Dominic Sandbrook's magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain - the book behind the major BB2 series The Seventies
In this gloriously colourful book, Dominic Sandbrook recreates the extraordinary period of the late 1970s in all its chaos and contradiction, revealing it as a decisive point in our recent history. Across the country, a profound argument about the future of the nation was being played out, not just in families and schools but in everything from episodes of Doctor Who to singles by the Clash. These years saw the peak of trade union power and the apogee of an old working-class Britain - but also the birth of home computers, the rise of the ready meal and the triumph of the Grantham grocer's daughter who would change our history forever.
Reviews:
'Magnificent ... if you lived through the late Seventies - or, for that matter, even if you didn't - don't miss this book' Mail on Sunday
'Sandbrook has created a specific style of narrative history, blending high politics, social change and popular culture ... always readable and assured ... Anyone who genuinely believes we have never been so badly governed should read this splendid book' Stephen Robinson, Sunday Times
'[Sandbrook] has a remarkable ability to turn a sow's ear into a sulk purse. His subject is depressing, but the book itself is a joy ... [it] benefits from an exceptional cast of characters ... As a storyteller, Sandbrook is, without doubt, superb ... [he] is an engaging history capable of impressive insight ... When discussing politics, Sandbrook is masterful ... Seasons in the Sun is a familiar story, yet seldom has it been told with such verve' Gerard DeGroot, Seven
'A brilliant historian ... I had never fully appreciated what a truly horrible period it was until reading Sandbrook ... You can see all these strange individuals - Thatcher, Rotten, Larkin, Benn - less as free agents expressing their own thoughts, than as the inevitable consequence of the economic and political decline which Sandbrook so skilfully depicts' A. N. Wilson, Spectator
'Nuanced ... Sandbrook has rummaged deep into the cultural life of the era to remind us how rich it was, from Bowie to Dennis Potter, Martin Amis to William Golding' Damian Whitworth, The Times
'Sharply and fluently written ... entertaining ... By making you quite nostalgic for the present, Sandbrook has done a public service' Evening Standard
About the author:
Born in Shropshire ten days before the October 1974 election, Dominic Sandbrook was educated at Oxford, St Andrews and Cambridge. He is the author of three hugely acclaimed books on post-war Britain: Never Had It So Good, White Heat and State of Emergency, and two books on modern American history, Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell. A prolific reviewer and columnist, he writes regularly for the Sunday Times, Daily Mail, New Statesman and BBC History.
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Commanded gigantic audiences. Among the most watched programmes of the decade were an episode of Love Thy Neighbour in April 1974, an episode of George and Mildred in October 1976 and the Christmas Day 1977 editions of The Mike Yarwood Show and Morecambe and Wise. The latter, the dynamic duo’s final show for the BBC, had an astonishing guest cast, including Elton John, Penelope Keith, Richard Briers, Kenneth Kendall, Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Frank Bough, James Hunt and Angela Rippon, and.
Then on to Skye and up the west coast of Scotland towards Ullapool, where they stopped at a little hotel on the quayside. Even there, however, the Chancellor was unable to put the plight of the economy behind him. ‘After a pleasant supper of Loch Broom smokies,’ he recalled, ‘we went to bed.’ But what followed was a ‘night of French farce’. Scarcely had he laid his head on the pillow than the telephone rang downstairs. So he trooped back downstairs, wearing a raincoat over his pyjamas, to the.
Mail. As an encore, he played the whole of his last composition, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. It was an evening, wrote Rolling Stone’s Paul Gambaccini, that ‘literally had to be seen to be believed’.1 If nothing else, Wakeman’s career was an illustration of the enormous possibilities that had been opened up by the rise of pop culture. A former grammar school boy from the west London suburbs, he had trained at the Royal College of Music before joining the group Yes in 1971. Pale,.
Glanced over at his grinning wife Audrey, there were roars of laughter, and some delegates shouted ‘More!’ ‘Now let me just make it clear,’ Callaghan said mock-seriously, ‘that I have promised nobody that I shall be at the altar in October. Nobody at all.’35 The next day’s front pages had great fun with the Prime Minister’s excursion into tuneless verse. ‘Play It Again, Jim!’ read the headline in the Express, noting that the song actually belonged to one of Marie Lloyd’s rivals, Vesta Victoria.
McCreesh was just 15, Gallagher 18; both were Catholics. On Monday, another Catholic civilian, George Keating, was killed in Belfast when a gunman opened fire on the Bunch of Grapes pub on Garmoyle Street. The next day, just across the border in Monaghan, the Fine Gael senator Billy Fox was murdered by the IRA: punishment, it was thought, for being one of the only Protestant politicians in the Irish Parliament. On Wednesday, a young British gunner, David Farrington, who had been in the army for.