Never Had It So Good review
Jun. 28th, 2008 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI bought Never Had It So Good by Dominic Sandbrook as research for a writing project that was completed in April. I didn't actually start reading it until a month ago, but I'm very glad I did, as it was extremely good.
It's a history of Britain from 1956-1963 (or "from Suez to The Beatles" as the sub-title states), and it's largely fascinating. It covers the politics of the time (Eden and the Suez Crisis, Macmillan's years as Prime Minister, The Night Of The Long Knives, the Profumo scandal, etc), the nuclear arms race and the founding of the CND, music, fashion, the rise of the consumer society, immigration, cinema, and literature. All of it is written in an informative style that is easy to read and keeps the reader's interest throughout.
The only slight criticism I have is that the structure was sometimes a little confusing - because the author chose one subject and charted its progress throughout the years being studied, it was on occasion difficult to follow the timeline as a whole, and he would refer back to things mentioned in the first chapter much later in the book when I couldn't remember the details any more. However, I think a straight chronological structure would have been more confusing as he would have had to chop and change between all the different subjects all the time.
It's not a short book, or one that's easy to read very quickly - it's taken me a whole month to finish it, which is a long time for me, but it says a lot that I've stuck with it for 750 pages when I'm not usually one for history. There's actually a second volumne, covering 1964 to 1970, which is another 750 pages long, and I'll definitely read it at some point, but I think I need something a bit shorter and lighter in between!
It's a history of Britain from 1956-1963 (or "from Suez to The Beatles" as the sub-title states), and it's largely fascinating. It covers the politics of the time (Eden and the Suez Crisis, Macmillan's years as Prime Minister, The Night Of The Long Knives, the Profumo scandal, etc), the nuclear arms race and the founding of the CND, music, fashion, the rise of the consumer society, immigration, cinema, and literature. All of it is written in an informative style that is easy to read and keeps the reader's interest throughout.
The only slight criticism I have is that the structure was sometimes a little confusing - because the author chose one subject and charted its progress throughout the years being studied, it was on occasion difficult to follow the timeline as a whole, and he would refer back to things mentioned in the first chapter much later in the book when I couldn't remember the details any more. However, I think a straight chronological structure would have been more confusing as he would have had to chop and change between all the different subjects all the time.
It's not a short book, or one that's easy to read very quickly - it's taken me a whole month to finish it, which is a long time for me, but it says a lot that I've stuck with it for 750 pages when I'm not usually one for history. There's actually a second volumne, covering 1964 to 1970, which is another 750 pages long, and I'll definitely read it at some point, but I think I need something a bit shorter and lighter in between!
