A Classless Society

by Alwyn Turner

"Superb" NICK COHEN, author of What's Left? "Tremendously entertaining" DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Sunday Times "Like his previous histories of the Seventies and Eighties, A Classless Society is an extraordinarily comprehensive work. Turner writes brilliantly, creating a compelling narrative of the decade, weaving contrasting elements together with a natural storyteller’s aplomb… engaging and unique" IRVINE WELSH, Daily Telegraph "Ravenously inquisitive, darkly comical and coolly undeceived... Turner is a master of the telling detail" CRAIG BROWN, Mail on Sunday Opening with a war in the Gulf and ending with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, this entertaining encyclopedia of recent British history goes in search of the decade when modern Britain came of age. What it finds is a nation anxiously grappling with new technologies, tentatively embracing new lifestyles, and, above all, forging a new sense of what it means to be British. An exploration of a decade that is yet to be defined or anatomised as the 1960s or 1970s have been, this comprehensive history examines a Britain still reeling from the conflicts of the Thatcher years. When Margaret Thatcher was ousted from Downing Street in November 1990 after eleven years of bitter social and economic conflict, many hoped that the decade to come would be more 'caring'; others dared to believe that the more radical policies of her revolution might even be overturned. Across politics and culture there was an  apparent yearning for something the Iron Lady had famously society. Yet the forces that had warred over the country during the 1980s were to prevent any simple turning back of the clock. The 'New Britain' to emerge under John Major and Tony Blair would be a economically unequal but culturally classless. While Westminster agonised over sleaze and the ERM, the country outside became the playground of the New Lad and his sister the Ladette, of Swampy and the YBAs, of Posh and Becks and Jarvis Cocker. A new era was dawning which promised to connect us via the 'information superhighway' and entertain us with 'docusoaps'. It was also a period that  would see old moral certainties swept aside, and once venerable institutions descend into farce - followed, in the case of  the Royal Family, by tragedy. "Deserves to become a classic" EDWINA CURRIE "Rich and encyclopaedic" ROGER LEWIS, Daily Mail "Excellent" D.J. TAYLOR, Independent

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, British Literature, Economics

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went up to uni in 1997, the year Radiohead released OK Computer, cinemas were showing The Full Monty, ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ seemed to live permanently at Number 1, and Tony Blair became the first leftwing leader to have won an election in my lifetime. All things considered, it was a good time and a good place to be growing up and dealing with the perennial teenage concerns of artistic discovery, sexual frustration, and political disillusionment. Now, twenty years later, I'm still processing the slow-burning bewilderment of realising that my instincts about society and the wider world, which I thought represented a baseline universal common sense, are actually the products of a very specific environment.

My own feelings about the mindset of that environment are, as it happens, perfectly captured by an anecdote that Alwyn Turner borrows from David Baddiel.

In 1990 the comedian David Baddiel went to a screening of John McNaughton’s harrowing, low-budget film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which had been made in 1986 but but still hadn’t been passed for general release. During a panel discussion that followed the showing, an audience member began railing against the extreme violence in the movie, about which, she said, she had received no warning. At which point another member of the audience interrupted her: ‘For fuck’s sake, what did you expect?’ he called out. ‘It’s not called Henry the Elephant, is it?’ Baddiel was convulsed with fits of laughter, and later reflected: ‘I think it was at that point that the eighties fell away for me, or at least that seriousness fell away for me, seriousness as in that adolescent, or post-adolescent, concern about everything. I was never going to be intense again.’

The 90s were a time when no one really took anything seriously. This was its greatest strength – self-importance, national crises, personal anxiety and gender disagreements were all found to dissolve under the application of an intelligent irony – but also, perhaps, the decade's most unfortunate legacy: my generation had the sense that things were slowly but steadily getting better without our direct involvement, resulting in a political disengagement whose consequences are now becoming distressingly obvious.

The complacency came from an eerie sense of accord – or at least impasse – in both culture and politics. There was no equivalent, in Britain, of the culture wars that were so convulsing the US during the 90s. Both left and right broadly agreed on the inevitability of a certain social liberalisation – equal opportunities for women, access to birth control, the normalisation of homosexuality were all things that were not seriously opposed except by a few religious leaders whose irrelevance felt increasingly obvious. The political parties had come together in an indistinguishable middle-ground (commentators afterwards talked about ‘Blajorism’); unlike, say, France, where the Communist Party and the National Front still contributed hugely to public debate, there was very little support in the UK for parties on the political extremes.

This was, of course, in many ways a problem. Labour were voted in by a population desperate for an alternative to the sleaze-ridden Tory ‘nasty party’. What they got was a slick rebranding of the same basic economic, and even social, policies – what's more, in dumping John Major for Tony Blair they had swapped a working-class boy who'd left school at sixteen for a middle-class career politician educated at boarding school and Oxford.


The Conservatives celebrate social mobility in a 1992 campaign…


…and try negative tactics with the infamous ‘demon eyes’ poster, 1996

Turner clearly sympathises with Major, presented here as basically a decent politician trying to lead a party of squabbling bastards. Blair, meanwhile, is seen as a ‘political salesman’, who ‘presented [the public] a mirror, rather than becoming an architect of change’.

At one point in the mid-nineties, it seemed that a new Tory MP was caught shagging his secretary or getting taken up the arse on Clapham Common every other week: seeing these cases summarised one after the other here gives them a decidedly comic effect, like flicking through a Viz strip. Some of the details seemed very British: after culture minister David Mellor was forced to resign, an actress having sold her story of their affair to the tabloids, European partners were completely bemused. ‘An affair with an actress?’ puzzled the former French culture minister, Jack Lang. ‘Why else does one become minister of culture?’

Alan Clark, meanwhile, went right through disgrace and out the other side into grudging respect, when it turned out that he had not only slept with the wife of a South African judge, but also both of her daughters. ‘I still think he's super,’ said his own wife. ‘I know he's an S-H-one-T, but that's it.…Quite frankly, if you bed people that I call “below-stairs class”, they go to the papers, don't they?’

When Labour finally got in, though, they weren't much better on the sleaze front. Most infamously, Peter Mandelson had to resign from the Cabinet in disgrace, only to be reappointed some months later to a different Cabinet position, from which he then had to resign in disgrace over a second, separate incident. (Somehow, the fuckers got away with appointing him to yet a third Cabinet post.) Labour's ties to big business always played a role; the party, Turner suggests, had ‘a dangerous attraction to affluence’.

I've already written too much elsewhere about the whole ‘new lad’ phenomenon; Turner, who is extremely good on the subject, pinpoints it as ‘a slightly muddled, slightly disappointing compromise, a way of helping to negotiate a transitional period’ as the British patriarchy resignedly surrendered its more obnoxious privileges. Martin Deeson, Loaded's first editor, described his readership as men who were ‘slagged off by feminists but egalitarian by inclination’ – the general attitude appeared to be that men welcomed the prospect of having more women as ministers, leaders and CEOs as long as some of them occasionally allowed themselves to be photographed in their knickers, in a spirit of communal relations.

I think it's not unfair to claim that people my age were more puzzled than outraged by the idea that men and women were anything other than equal – it seemed anachronistic, something for an older generation. It was naïve, but then we grew up in a state headed by a queen and overseen by a female PM; as Cool Britannia kicked in and the right-on politics of the 80s started feeling increasingly silly, the sense was that men and women liked each other, fancied each other, and considered ourselves to be fundamentally on the same side. And in typical 90s style, nothing was really serious anyway, everything mediated through a wicked sense of humour. Imagine our surprise as internet culture enveloped us in our early twenties, and we found the conversation dominated by people our age for whom basic truths were the loci of vicious disputes, characterised by entrenched political opposites and what looked like gender warfare. It was, and is, confusing, dispiriting and toxic.



Just as peak ’60s came in 1969, when the Sixties dream was already rotting, so too peak ’90s, which I'm calling 1997, was also the year when everything was falling apart. In August, Princess Diana went flying into a pillar under the Pont de l'Alma at 100 km/hr, and suddenly the country was caught up in a hysterical outpouring of mass emotion – tears in the streets, memorial fountains, acres of soft toys and flowers. The British public were full of unaccustomed feelings, and anyone getting in the way was going down.

A Sardinian tourist was…spotted taking a teddy-bear [from the displays of condolences] and was arrested after members of the public gave chase; he was given a seven-day sentence, later reduced to a £100 fine, and on his way out of court was punched in the face by a 43-year-old man who later explained: ‘I did it for Britain.’

Newspapers, in fact, were caught on the hoof somewhat, having made a fortune from promoting the idea that Diana was someone to be leered at or sneered at. In the US, the National Enquirer backpedalled with impressive alacrity:

We apologise for the Princess Diana page one headline DI GOES SEX MAD, which is still on the stands at some locations. It is currently being replaced with a special 72-page tribute issue: A FAREWELL TO THE PRINCESS WE ALL LOVED.

In describing all this, Turner is acute enough to take note of ‘the confusion of a generation that found its sense of irony had become out of date overnight’. Perhaps Tony Blair is emblematic of that shift, too – with his constant assurances that ‘I'm a pretty decent guy’, he was a black hole of irony, a walking grinning embodiment of shiny surface with no substance underneath. ‘It's the signals that matter, not the policy,’ he actually said. When he realised that this didn't impress anyone – as Turner puts it – ‘Blair's interest seemed to wander away from the home front and onto the world stage’. And with what consequences. The decade in that sense really ended when the towers came down in 2001, at which point the ironic detachment of the 90s ended, we all grew up, and Tony, squinting into the middle distance, glimpsed his chance to leave a lasting legacy.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alwyn Turner's 90s overview ultimately casts it as a decade of consolidation: the economic liberalism of the Thatcher years was entrenched, and social liberalism caught up to it. He's also giving his verdict on two politicians - John Major as a leader weakened by his party, and Tony Blair as a leader weakened by his personal flaws. The basic continuity between Major and Blair is another of Turner's big themes.

It's not an unfair analysis. But it leaves the book with an inevitable structural problem. Stressing the continuity takes the drama out of one of the big political events of the era - the 1997 election becomes the replacement of a sleazy, incompetent group with a slicker but even more incompetent group. This leaves A Classless Society front-loaded: the ERM crisis, which is dealt with in chapter 1, is the book's high point. After that, both governments are depicted as stumbling from minor crisis to minor crisis, with Turner broadly forgiving of the Tories and far less lenient to New Labour. Turner obviously detests Blair's vanity and timidity, and his book is more entertaining once he gets his fangs into Call-Me-Tony. But the scrupulous fairness of the Major coverage vanishes too - some flagship Blairite initiatives, like Sure Start, go entirely unmentioned, an odd choice in a book that's happy to give a fair hearing to the Cones Hotline.

The back of the book calls Turner a master of the "telling detail": he's more like a hoarder of it. He fluffs up his blow-by-blow coverage of the numbing domestic politics of the 90s to 600 pages with an accompanying stream of pop culture commentary, and several chapters devoted to it. As a political historian Turner is dogged but competent, and usually happy to take a view. As a cultural critic he's shallow - his blizzard of references masking the fact they're drawn from a rather limited range. The music he cares about is Britpop and little else; the television sitcoms and the odd detective show; the novels don't range much further than Hornby and Fielding. He's not consistently interested in what was popular, but his idea of significance is narrow. If you spent the 90s reading the NME, GQ and The Sunday Times and nothing else, you'd end up with a take on it very like this. (Turner also has the modern historian's bad habit of never quoting a real human when a fictional one will do: characters from David Baddiel novels and Drop The Dead Donkey stand in for public opinion, a practise that lets him down when he starts uncritically quoting Alan Partridge.)

In the end, Turner has more in common with the hated Blair than he'd like. The obsession with trivial detail hidden behind a vague grasp of a bigger picture. The desire to be inclusive at the expense of focus. An occasional unwillingness to make choices, though Turner's fence-sitting is more snarky than smarmy. And a final similarity - he went on too long. The 90s will always be a slippery period, but after 600 pages of this half-digested retread, I felt kettled on memory lane.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

“And glory be, these fuckers are ignoring me. I'm from another century”

Is it too early to attempt a social history of the 1990s? I've been ploughing through books by Dominic Sandbrook and Alwyn Turner, telling the story of Britain since the mid-50s, and have now reached the point where history becomes personal memory. And perhaps that is the reason this book felt a bit less authoritative tan either Sandbrook's books or Turner's earlier histories of the 1970s and 1980s.

Turner begins not on 1 January 1990, but with the fall of Thatcher in November of that year. I remember her resignation being announced with great glee by my drama teacher, the memorably named Ms Precious (a sign of how the times have changed, that back in 1990, using 'Ms' felt like a political statement, rather than the default) and ends eleven years later with the morning of September 11th 2001, where I remember taking a call from my then girlfriend while working in the office of a fast-failing dotcom start-up, telling me to get myself in front of the nearest television, as people were flying planes into buildings... The book details the day-to-day travails and squabbles of domestic political life in perhaps more detail than it really merits. I'd forgotten (or perhaps never been aware of) many of the petty battles, resignations and scandals that filled the papers at the time – perhaps an illustration of the fact that in the interregnum between Thatcher and the 'war on terror', politics was really not all that interesting. There were a few amusing titbits: Turner is not at his strongest in describing actual conflict, but his description of Mo Mowlam's involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was interesting - “it probably wasn't a wise move to tell Ian Paisley to 'fuck off', but she was articulating a sentiment that millions of Britons had felt over the decades”

By the end, I was also rather persuaded by Turner's observation that, in terms of both their message and their politics, Blair stole rather more from his predecessor, John Major, than is generally acknowledged. The Citizen's Charter, for example (which I remembered only as being somehow tied up with traffic cones) could easily have been a New Labour policy initiative. And the 'classless society' which gives the book it's title was an idea that both Major and Blair, who were hardly class warriors, was one that both referred to in their time in office. That Blair was

It's noticeable that Turner's own acuity seems to bare an inverse relationship to the significance of the events and cultural phenomena he's describing. He has little to say about the Bosnian war, that dominated news bulletins in the mid-90s, but his take on the rise of the 'new lad' and 'Loaded magazine' in the early 1990s, as a direct reaction on the part of 30-something men, or at least a small number of them who happened to be in the media business, to the po-faced identity politics and earnest seriousness of alternative 80s culture, struck me as spot on, even if it was something that rather passed me by in my still earnest, 80s-alternative teenage years. I never bought a copy of Loaded, though from occasional glances at the barbers, I'd second Alwyn Turner's view that it long ago lost its veneer of knowing irony.

For me, a part of the appeal of this book was pure nostalgia – whether it be the re-telling of the time in the mid-90s when indie music suddenly became mainstream – as illustrated by the Oasis/Blur chart battle of summer 1995 (let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that the songs themselves were both rather ropey), the constant references to Drop the Dead Donkey, which I now remember that we watched every week and would constantly talk about at school, but which I hadn't really given any thought to for the best part of twenty years now, or his account of the Newbury Bypass protests and the new age traveller movement, which briefly fascinated me as a fifteen year old who'd been given a couple of C90s with Levellers albums on them. It had, I think, the same appeal as that old standby, running away and joining the circus. Suffice to say, that as a thirty-something civil servant, it's not the road I took...

Another highlight of the book is the account of the low key disaster that was the Millennium Dome – perhaps not a bad metaphor for politics in the 1990s. It began life under the Conservative Government (Hestletine's idea, I think) and when Labour were elected in 1997, it appears they lacked the nerve to cancel it. The problem, in retrospect, appears to have been that nobody could really agree what it was for, and having built a fabulous structure in Battersea, there was endless in-fighting over what to put inside it, with the end result being a bit of a tedious children's museum of the present day (although I must add, in common with most Britons, I never actually saw it.)

It's a long way from being a definitive book, but that will probably have to wait for at least another decade or two, and in the meantime, it's not a bad effort.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straightforward summary of the 90s. For obvious reasons the political story stretches out in to the next decade to cover what Blair did after getting re-elected. This is all fairly solid, covering the political stories and pop culture developments to as much depth as you'd expect in a good TV documentary (Dominic Sandbrook supplies a warmly supportive quote for the back cover). However the coverage of the European story never looks very far at the wider context of how the project of union was changing on the continent, or digging in to the detail of the economic arguments for and against. Equally the mass culture coverage stays close to the NME/Melody Maker worldview, with the consequent fixation on white indie rock bands rather than the various dance subcultures, or, for that matter, the mainstream pop that solds bucketloads more than Denim or Suede. But all the main points get mentioned, and there is some thoughtful discussion of phenomena like Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons. Ultimately, this is a decent summary for middle-aged graduates who need their faltering memories boosted.

[Bookthesp1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alwyn Turner once again produces another excellent volume in his series of books chronicling the decades from the 1970s onwards. He essentially out Sandbrooks Dominic by producing a trenchant critique of both the Major and Blair years that doesn’t get bogged down in Sandbrookian long anecdotes and product placement. His character studies of Blair in particular are impressive and telling in their forensic demolition of the Blair project. Indeed the selection of stories, examples and narrative are done with flair and produce a vivid picture particularly of politics and the inner workings of the parties - granted the Liberals are given short shrift but overall the story is told with a consistent note of enquiring scepticism.
As for the nineties whether he fully succeeds in pinning down the nature of this strange decade is debatable but it’s a great read that really encourages the reader to rethink some of the perceptions sold by Blair er al.

It’s telling that Dom Sandbrook himself picks Turners volume on the 1980s as a great and stand out read of that decade - think he should indeed be worried about the competition. At the time of writing this Turner has a volume out looking at the noughties later this year.

This volume on the classless society is indeed a class act.

[Michael Shevlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the problem with books written about history is that if they are within your own memories of that period then you have already formed a judgement of them.

This book reads like a love letter to John Major who, in the author’s eyes, can do no wrong and was a paragon of virtue, truth and integrity in the seedy world of British politics - which is pure fantasy. He was an insipid, uninspired and unimaginative man who happened upon being Prime Minister. Blair (in hindsight a one-dimensional delusionist and media junkie) - entered office after years of Tory infighting with a great deal of hope. The author seems to not recall that. He also does not recall what was actually happening in Europe and the U.S. which was seismic.

He quotes Drop the Dead Donkey a bit too much and writes off Britpop with the same disdain as a Findus pancake. Dance music? Rave culture? Grunge? The Internet? Monica? It’s like the author just listened to every episode of Today in Parliament and turned it into the Diary of Adrian Mole. There must be better recent histories out there.

[Jason Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strong take on the last century’s closing decade. As the Tory Government begins to sink beneath cash for questions , sleaze , Maastricht etc new labour waits in the wings to find its own problems in Iraq and the associated dossiers , the infamous millennium dome ....The book is balanced and good at showing how popular culture reflected politics . If some of Majors and Blair’s foreign wars weren’t their finest hours, the book is warm about the positive role played by both in the Irish peace process . The authors thesis is that both PM’s wanted to create a more equal society but ended up reacting to cultural forces that left them behind . Maybe , but probably not unique to this period .? I will explore his books on other decades and hope he ventures into this century .

[Paddy McKeating · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strangely partisan history of Britain in the 90s. The chapters on social history are well researched and engaging. Yet those on politics are so sympathetic to the right wing and full of subjectivity that it makes for tough reading.
Northern Ireland is relegated to a few pages. Indeed the confusion of what a loyalist and a unionist is sums up the lack of understanding towards the section of Britain in which the most progress was made throughout the decade. A real missed opportunity here. Even a chapter on how change was experienced as the troubles came to an end would have been engaging.
Any discussion of support of the EU is disregarded almost whole scale. Hey ho…

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to enjoy this but sadly after reading Alwyn's other books in the trilogy I found this over political.

I love how Alwyn weaves politics into culture but this got the balance completely wrong. It's the largest word count of the series and most of the extra words were used in often unnecessary political detail.

I found myself speedy reading huge clumps.

On a positive note...always does have a wealth of info and it helps look back on an era with hindsight that once again shows how sleazy and often dangerous governments are.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’VE FINALLY FINISHED!

A thoroughly good read about a decade I grew up in. I was too young to remember much at the time so it was interesting to fill in a lot of the political gaps.

This took so long to read which only gives me a greater appreciation of how long it probably took to research and write. Bravo.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turner’s review of the Britain in the 1990s is largely a detailed review of Major and Blair’s governments. Whilst popular culture is referenced, this is largely a popular political history. Moreover, despite occasional references to other locations this is an England-centric or more properly a London-centric history. Nevertheless it reads well and Turner’s judgements are interesting.

[Dakota Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and found it to be a fascinating deep dive into the UK (England really) in the 90's. The biases of the author are on full display which is a shame, as I alluded to it is very British- in other words English. Scotland is mentioned a bit toward the end though! That said I learnt so much and felt often like I was there in that time. Can't wait to read his other books :)

[Matthew Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

My least favourite of the 3 in the trilogy probably because most of it was seen through my eyes myself, still the era before Blair was very interesting to learn more about. I do find some of the sympathy for some characters misplaced mind.

[Andrew Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an engaging modern history writer. Following the template of his book on the 70s and 80s, Turner combines high politics with popular culture to great effect. Making you genuinely reflect on a period you've lived through, and not just bask in the nostalgia, is a rare talent.

[Nick Harriss · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third in the series by the author, and this one continues the high quality of its predecessors. The 1990s were the first decade of my adult life, so I can remember many of the events covered very well, but as always, matters look different with time. An excellent book.

[John W · Rating 4 out of 5]

A walloping great book about a dismal decade, proceeded by a hellish one and succeeded by a humiliating one. If you've ever suspected that the 90's in Britain was, in the final analysis, fucking awful, this book goes some way to explaining why.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a blast, a real trip down memory lane. Mr Blair comes out of it rather unfavourably, to say the least.

[Jonathan Mccombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

throughly entertaining book, great references to politics and popular culture. Some very intriguing facts and anecdotes that i knew nothing about.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a crowd-sourced diary of the 90s than a history, and selective in what it remembered. But an entertaining and opinionated overview of what it did cover.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent analysis of the nineties combining astute political commentary with a cultural review of the trends and preoccupations of the decade

[Alejandro Shirvani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Third in the series of books reviewing Britain in the 70s, 80s and 90s, follows a familiar theme with lots of content on the politics of the era supplemented by material on culture and society.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third and final volume of Turner’s social history of modern Britain, this was an interesting read as it is now sufficiently close to the present day that I remember living through most of the events depicted.

It’s weaker than its two predecessors but that’s partly a function of lack of distance and partly more of an issue with the tune than the player. It’s a good capping off of the series, but there’s likely to be a more comprehensive analysis written, most likely when the dust has further settled.

[Gavin Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of all of the history books I've been reading recently this one covers the latest period. Consequently, it's the time I remember most clearly. When reading history you remember, it is difficult to avoid confirmation bias and therefore a little difficult to maintain objectivity. I found Turner's political coverage to be thorough and fair. With hindsight, John Major looks like a decent man doing an impossible job, and John Smith a man who could have taken Britain in a totally different (better) direction if only he could have foregone a pie or two. The New Labour section makes for depressing (but accurate) reading. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Peter Mandelson all seem to be more interested in personal gain (or in Blair's case, a messiah complex) than in actually running the country, such a waste of the genuine hope and energy that I can remember from the election result.

Turner gets a little too caught up in the popular culture of the time for my taste. There is a lot in here about the television of the decade, much of which can seem a little tenuous at times. Turner reveals his musical tastes in his choices of song lyrics for headings and I really felt that he overemphasised the significance of 'Britpop' (a term I've always hated). As always though, Turner does a great job of capturing the absurd hypocrisy of Britain's print media. I was particularly happy to see coverage of the Brasseye paedophile episode. The rise of the internet isn't the only reason that newspapers find their circulations dwindling these days.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Alwyn Turner's third volume of post war British History, this time covering the 1990s. To a large extent he is entering unchartered territory, as to my knowledge there isn't a great number of books out there that provide a political & cultural overview of the entire decade. This maybe because that for many people (me included) the 90s still feel indecently recent. I think it suffers slightly from being a period that doesn't have a 'neat' chronological beginning and end (unlike the 'Thatcher 80s'). Let's not forget that John Major was PM for most of the decade, whilst Britpop burned itself out relatively quickly, and arguably the Blair government was defined by events in the 21st Century, the late 90s was his 'honeymoon phase' (although the last chapter serves as a post 9/11 coda). That being said there is a lot of entertaining and informative stuff here. Turner's dry wit remains in evidence (like using the 'culinary crime' series Pie in the Sky to make historical analogies), and his arguments are persuasive: eg Blair & Major were closer ideologically than the more often touted Blair & Thatcher. Since the 90s were a very important decade for me, this was a very enjoyable exercise in nostalgia. The good news is that Turner has gone back on his original intention to conclude his series with this book and is writing more 'decade histories'...he is currently working on a history of the fifties.

[Jemma · Rating 3 out of 5]

A blockbuster account of the cultural, social, economic and political history of the 90s. There is much to like here but rather like the later Harry Potter books, it needs an edit. Most irritating though is the way Major is given the benefit of the doubt at every stage, whereas New Labour is roundly criticised at every opportunity. That is not how the 90s was. Major did not seem incompetent, he was - however nice a chap he is. Meanwhile Labour were not merely opportunists.

This account is delivered by a skilled hand, hence so many interesting nuggets but it is very biased. My guess is that the author is a Liberal Democrat, who wishes to dis Labour rather than face up to their current disgrace in enabling the present government. Indeed, very little if anything is said critically about the Liberals here, yet Ashdown's diaries are used as a source and they reveal a more nuanced picture.

[Rob Adey · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I voted in the 90s, my main information came from The Time, The Place and Official PlayStation Magazine. This is a really good catch-up on what went on politically, and it reassuringly reveals that basically no-one read the Maastricht Treaty, so I can forgive myself for not really knowing what it was at the time.

Outside of politics, there is some slightly unconvincing cultural analysis - the popularity of Terry Pratchett and Harry Potter indicate a surge in interest of different types of spirituality, apparently - and it feels a little disconcerting that the most quoted source is Drop the Dead Donkey. But the political story it tells is fairly compelling.

[Mark Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic account of the socio-economic evolution of Britain throughout the 1990's.

This mighty; and thoroughly researched tome, shines an enquiring light on both the tumultuous, and the vacuous. The 1990's were the decade which promised great change and a qualitative break from the decadence of the 1980's, and yet, according to this reading, resulted in a mild re-heating of 1960's culture mated to a political enviroment which focused on the white heat of the focus group.


Entertaining; absorbing, and brilliantly written. A pertinent, and nostalgic review of life in the non-committal centrism of the 1990's.

[Jayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read the 1980s version immediately before, I was quite disappointed with this book. I don't think it was the author's fault, I just think the 1990s was a much less interesting decade, in particular the politics (which I think the author did focus on too heavily). John Major and Tony Blair were never going to compare with Margaret Thatcher for newsworthiness and controversy and anything interesting that did happen in Tony Blair's reign was really in the 2000s, so the late 1990s were quite dull.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read, having grown up during the decade and voted for the first time in 2001. It’s also interesting reflecting on the battles over Europe back then given recent events on that front.

All that being said it’s not the best written book. The pop culture references feel quite throw-away and random in places. The splitting into themed sections results in a timeline which jumps all over the place and is quite hard to follow in places.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb book about the nineties, as good as his books on previous decades