A Northern Wind : Britain 1962-65

by Kynaston, David | c 1960 to c 1970
Published 04/07/2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 704 pages
198 x 131 x 47mm | 548g

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.

'From Daleks and dingy tower blocks to nuclear threats, this addictively readable book charts dizzying change . . . Sometimes moving, often comic, always fascinating'DOMINIC SANDBROOK, SUNDAY TIMESHow much can change in two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of Liverpool's the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman 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.

A WATERSTONES, TIMES, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR'Magnificent . . . The early Sixties have never been recounted so well' THE TIMES, BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A breathtaking array of treasures . . . A book to savour' TLS'Extraordinarily atmospheric, capturing more than anything a sense of what this moment might have felt like to live through' FINANCIAL TIMES'Kynaston is the most humane and even-handed chronicler of our time, and the one best-qualified to carry this mightily compelling national story onwards' OBSERVER