The Thirties

Book excerpt: J.B. Priestley famously described the ′three Englands′ he saw in the 1930s; Old England, nineteenth-century England and the new, post-war England. Thirties Britain was, indeed, a world of contrasts, ultimately torn between the image of a nation rendered hopeless by the Depression, unemployment and international tensions, and that of a Britain of complacent suburban home-owners with a baby Austin in every garage. Now Juliet Gardiner, acclaimed author of the award-winning Wartime, provides a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade.