David Kynaston

Francis Green

A rigorous, compelling and balanced examination of the British private school system and the lifetime inequalities it entrenches

Britain's Private School Problem

Engines of Privilege

Days Of '62

On the Cusp

The early sixties in Britain told as only David Kynaston ('the most entertaining historian alive' Spectator) can. Running from 1962 to 1965, A Northern Wind is the anticipated new volume in the landmark 'Tales of a New Jerusalem' series. 'A vivid insight into the character of British life between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the death of Winston Churchill. Here is an intricate tapestry that conveys the essence of time' Literary Review How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston's acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston's masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill – while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history. Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC's controversial That Was The Week That Was; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham's Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional and immersive, Tales of a New Jerusalem has transformed how we see and understand post-war Britain. A Northern Wind continues the journey.

Britain 1962-65

A Northern Wind

'Not an ordinary bank, but a great engine of state,' Adam Smith declared of the Bank of England as long ago as 1776. The Bank is now over 320 years old, and throughout almost all that time it has been central to British history. Yet to most people, despite its increasingly high profile, its history is largely unknown. Till Time's Last Sand by David Kynaston is the first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of the Bank of England, opening with the Bank's founding in 1694 in the midst of the English financial revolution and closing in 2013 with Mark Carney succeeding Mervyn King as Governor. This is a history that fully addresses the important debates over the years about the Bank's purpose and modes of operation and that covers such aspects as monetary and exchange-rate policies and relations with government, the City and other central banks. Yet this is also a narrative that does full justice to the leading episodes and characters of the Bank, while taking care to evoke a real sense of the place itself, with its often distinctively domestic side. Deploying an array of piquant and revealing material from the Bank's rich archives, Till Time's Last Sand is a multi-layered and insightful portrait of one of our most important national institutions, from one of our leading historians. --

a history of the Bank of England, 1694-2013

Till time's last sand

Austerity Britain, 1945-51

Offers a fresh perspective on Britain during six momentous years (1945-1951). This book features a narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the country's political, economic and social landscape.

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951

"Like its three predecessors, A Club No More is a work of breathtaking scope and accomplishment.' D J Taylor, Independent Magisterial ... Kynaston is compulsively readable on all the great city scandals of recent years. But apart from anything else, his final volume is worth reading as a social documentary of our times.' Observer The fifty or so years which are chronicled here in impressive detail were momentous ones for the City.. .an outstanding achievement.' TLS The four volumes of his City history of the last 200 years are a splendid achievement ... invaluable.' Howard Davies, The Times It is a good story, superbly told by Kynaston, who holds together a very diverse narrative with considerable skill. Its greatest merit is that it can be read by specialist and non-specialist alike.' Financial Times With this volume, there ends the most interesting and original piece of history writing of our times.' James Buchan, Evening Standard As complete and as readable a record of the City's life as we could ever hope for...a remarkable exercise of scholarship and observation.' Literary Review Like the earlier volumes, this book is rich in detail and splendidly entertaining.. .Kynast

A club no more, 1945-2000

The City of London

David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain has so far taken us from the radically reforming Labour governments of the late 1940s in Austerity Britain and through the growing prosperity of Family Britain's more placid 1950s. Now Modernity Britain 1957-62 sees the coming of a new Zeitgeist as Kynaston gets up close to a turbulent era in which the speed of social change accelerated. The late 1950s to early 1960s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the 'never had it so good' years, when the Carry On film series got going, and films like Room at the Top and the first soaps like Coronation Street and Z Cars brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when CND galvanised the progressive middle class; when 'youth' emerged as a cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; and when 'meritocracy' became the buzz word of the day. In this period, the traditional norms of morality were perceived as under serious threat (Lady Chatterley's Lover freely on sale after the famous case), and traditional working-class culture was changing (wakes weeks in decline, the end of the maximum wage for footballers). The greatest change, though, concerned urban redevelopment: city centres were being yanked into the age of the motor car, slum clearance was intensified, and the skyline became studded with brutalist high-rise blocks. Some of this transformation was necessary, but too much would destroy communities and leave a harsh, fateful legacy. This profoundly important story of the transformation of Britain as it arrived at the brink of a new world is brilliantly told through diaries, letters newspapers and a rich haul of other sources and published in one magnificent paperback volume for the first time.

Modernity Britain, 1957-1962

Family Britain continues David Kynaston's groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Family Britain, 1951-1957

Family Britain continues David Kynaston's groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. 'The book is a marvel ... the level of detail is precise and fascinating' Sunday Telegraph 'A wonderfully illuminating picture of the way we were' The Times As in Austerity Britain, an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices drive the narrative. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as austerity and rationing gradually give way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. These and many other voices give a rich, unsentimental picture of everyday life in the 1950s. We also encounter well-known figures on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals) and Tiger's Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester). All this is part of a colourful, unfolding tapestry, in which the great national events - the Tories returning to power, the death of George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis - jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavour: Butlin's holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers, Hancock's Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston's Family Britain offers an unrivalled take on a largely cohesive, ordered, still very hierarchical society gratefully starting to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s towards domestic ease and affluence.

Continuing his groundbreaking series about post-war Britain, Kynaston presents a breathtaking portrait of our nation through eyewitness accounts, newspapers of the time and previously unpublished diaries. Drawing on the everyday experiences of people from all walks of life, Smoke in the Valley covers the length and breadth of the country to tell its story. This is an unsurpassed social history- intensely evocative to those who were there and eye-opening for their children and grandchildren.

Smoke in the Valley

Stephen Fay

WINNER OF THE TELEGRAPH CRICKET BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 'Beautifully written, meticulously researched and stuffed with rich sporting and social history ... Unputdownable' Mail on Sunday After the Second World War, as the BBC tightened its grip on the national consciousness, two of the most famous English voices were commentators on games of cricket. John Arlott and E.W. ('Jim') Swanton transformed the broadcasting of the nation's summer game into a national institution. Arlott and Swanton typified the contrasting aspects of post-war Britain. Because of their strong personalities and distinctive voices – Swanton's crisp and upper-class, Arlott's with its Hampshire burr – each had a loyal following. As England moved from a class-based to a more egalitarian society, nothing stayed the same – including professional cricket. Wise, lively and filled with rich social and sporting history, Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket shows how, as the game entered a new era, these two very different men battled to save the soul of the game. _______________________ 'Magnificent ... One of the best cricket books I've read in years: it makes long-forgotten matches live and breathe as though they were played yesterday' Daily Mail, Books of the Year 'A triumph ... [Kynaston and Fay] both have inside-outside sensitivities that keep this near-seamless collaboration shrewd, worldly, balanced and fresh' Times Literary Supplement

Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket

David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain has so far taken us from the radically reforming Labour governments of the late 1940s in Austerity Britain, through the growing prosperity of Family Britain's more placid 1950s, to the very cusp of the 1960s and the coming of a new Zeitgeist in Modernity Britain. The first part, Opening the Box, 1957–59, plotted the main themes of the new spirit of the age. Now, in part two – A Shake of the Dice, 1959–62 – through a rich haul of diaries, letters, newspapers and many other sources, Kynaston gets up close to a turbulent era as the speed of social change accelerated. By 1959 consumerism was inexorably taking hold (stripes for Signal toothpaste, flavours for potato crisps), relative economic decline was becoming the staple of political discourse (entry into Europe increasingly seen as our salvation), immigration was turning into an ever-hotter issue (the controversial coming of controls), traditional norms of morality were perceived as under serious threat (Lady Chatterley's Lover freely on sale after the famous case), and traditional working-class culture was changing (wakes weeks in decline, the end of the maximum wage for footballers) even as Coronation Street established itself as a national institution. The greatest shake of the dice, though, concerned urban redevelopment: city centres were being yanked into the age of the motor car, slum clearance was intensified, and the skyline became studded with brutalist high-rise boxes. Some of this transformation was necessary, but too much would destroy communities and leave a harsh, fateful legacy. This profoundly important story of the period of transformation from the old to the brink of a new world is now told brilliantly and in full for the first time.

Book Two: A Shake of the Dice, 1959-62

Modernity Britain

'I loved every page, and ended up admiring David Kynaston, our greatest social historian, even more than I already did' Nick HornbyBrimming with wisdom and humour, David Kynaston's diaries written over one football season offer up his most personal take on social history to date.David Kynaston was seven and a half years old when he attended his first Aldershot match in the early months of 1959. So began a deep attachment to the game and a lifelong loyalty to an obscure, small-town football club. Though as he sits down to write his diaries almost sixty years on, he reflects that life might have been simpler if his father had never taken him to that first match at the Rec... Shots in the Dark is the diary David Kynaston kept in the football season of 2016/17, detailing the ups and downs of the 'Shots' in the year that saw a divisive referendum in the UK and the impending ascension of Donald Trump. Here Kynaston presents a social history of modern Britain with a difference - all through the prism of the beautiful game. A testament to the ways in which fandom gives solidity and security to our lives, particularly in these bewildering and rapidly changing times, Shots in the Dark gets to the heart of what it means to be a devoted follower of a sports team. This is a diary of the macro and the micro, as questions of loyalty, of identity, of liberalism and of nationalism all rub uncomfortably up against each other during nine charged months.____________________'A master socioeconomic craftsman' Guardian'[A] delightful book ... This is a book about football but, like all the best books, it is about a thousand other things as well ... This thrilling, intimate, sometimes poignant, often wonderfully funny book shows the workings in real time of a deeply civilised, humane and tolerant mind in an age when those virtues are in short supply. Here is a man with whom you would want to go to a match, and even share a beer afterwards. David Kynaston is one of the good guys, and this is one of the very good books' Daily Mail'A charming diary ... He's the sort of fan I want to sit next to: partisan yet civil, eyes on the match but aware there are bigger things to worry about' Financial Times

A Diary of Saturday Dreams and Strange Times

Shots in the Dark

Richard Roberts

The Lion Wakes tells the modern story of HSBC, starting in the late 1970s, when the bank first broke out of the Asia-Pacific region with its purchase of Marine Midland Bank in the US. It follows HSBC's battle to purchase Midland Bank in1992, the subsequent move of head office from Hong Kong to London, and the string of acquisitions that brought the bank to its pre-eminent place in global finance today. Acclaimed historians Richard Roberts and David Kynaston chronicle the bank's struggles as well as its successes: the last part of the book deals with the ill-fated move into consumer finance in the US, as well as the financial crisis of 2008 and its effect on HSBC. Impeccably researched and generously illustrated from the HSBC archives, this is a valuable addition to global financial history.

A Modern History of HSBC

The Lion Wakes

The authorised history of the Bank of England by the bestselling David Kynaston, 'the most entertaining historian alive' (Spectator). 'Not an ordinary bank, but a great engine of state,' Adam Smith declared of the Bank of England as long ago as 1776. The Bank is now over 320 years old, and throughout almost all that time it has been central to British history. Yet to most people, despite its increasingly high profile, its history is largely unknown. Till Time's Last Sand by David Kynaston is the first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of the Bank of England, opening with the Bank's founding in 1694 in the midst of the English financial revolution and closing in 2013 with Mark Carney succeeding Mervyn King as Governor. This is a history that fully addresses the important debates over the years about the Bank's purpose and modes of operation and that covers such aspects as monetary and exchange-rate policies and relations with government, the City and other central banks. Yet this is also a narrative that does full justice to the leading episodes and characters of the Bank, while taking care to evoke a real sense of the place itself, with its often distinctively domestic side. Deploying an array of piquant and revealing material from the Bank's rich archives, Till Time's Last Sand is a multi-layered and insightful portrait of one of our most important national institutions, from one of our leading historians.

A History of the Bank of England 1694-2013

Till Time's Last Sand

For the first time, the Sunday Times bestseller Austerity Britain is available in one complete paperback volume. Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices - vivid, unselfconscious, and unaware of what the future holds. A Chingford housewife endures the tribulations of rationing; a retired schoolteacher observes during a royal visit how well-fed the Queen looks; a pernickety civil servant in Bristol is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own. An array of working-class witnesses describe how life in post-war Britain is, with little regard for liberal niceties or the feelings of their 'betters'. Many of these voices will stay with the reader in future volumes, jostling alongside well-known figures like John Arlott (here making his first radio broadcast, still in police uniform), Glenda Jackson (taking the 11+) and Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling poverty of postwar Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, the first volume of David Kynaston's ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.

The late 1950s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the 'never had it so good' years, when the Carry On film series and the TV soap Emergency Ward 10 got going, and films like Room at the Top and plays like A Taste of Honey brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when the urban skyline began irresistibly to go high-rise; when CND galvanised the progressive middle class; when 'youth' emerged as a cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; and when 'meritocracy' became the buzz word of the day. The consequences of this 'modernity' zeitgeist, David Kynaston argues, still affect us today.

Book One: Opening the Box, 1957-1959

'This is Kynaston at his best ... A rich and vivid picture of a nation in all its human complexity' IAN JACK 'A compulsive read ... Generous as well as sharp' MARGARET DRABBLE 'I was captivated by its brilliance' D. J. TAYLOR __________________ The 'real' Sixties began on 5 October 1962. On that remarkable Friday, the Beatles hit the world with their first single, 'Love Me Do', and the first James Bond film, Dr No, had its world premiere in London: two icons of the future heralding a social and cultural revolution. On the Cusp, continuing David Kynaston's groundbreaking history of post-war Britain, takes place during the summer and early autumn of 1962, in the charged months leading up to the moment that a country changed. The Rolling Stones' debut at the Marquee Club, the last Gentlemen versus Players match at Lord's, the issue of Britain's relationship with Europe starting to divide the country, Telstar the satellite beaming live TV pictures across the world, 'Telstar' the record a siren call to a techno future – these were months thick with incident, all woven together here with an array of fresh contemporary sources, including diarists both famous and obscure. Britain would never be the same again after these months. Sometimes indignant, sometimes admiring, always empathetic, On the Cusp evokes a world of seaside holidays, of church fetes, of Steptoe and Son – a world still of seemingly settled social and economic certainties, but in fact on the edge of fundamental change. ___________________ 'Sparkles with voices from a vanished world ... An entrancing representation, full of exquisite detail' KATE WILLIAMS 'What a joy it has been to find myself wholly immersed in the richness of Kynaston's account ... Thrilling' JULIET NICOLSON

David Kynaston

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