Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles

Dominic Sandbrook’s History of Britain #1

by Dominic Sandbrook

'Alternately delightful and enlightening...a treat to read' Observer'A rich treasure-chest of a book' Sunday TelegraphIn 1956 the Suez Crisis finally shattered the old myths of the British Empire and paved the way for the tumultuous changes of the decades to come. Dominic Sandbrook looks at the dramatic story of affluence and decline between 1956 and 1963. Arguing that historians have until now been besotted by the supposed cultural revolution of the Sixties, Sandbrook re-examines the myths of this controversial period and paints a more complicated picture of a society caught between conservatism and change. He explores the growth of a modern consumer society, the impact of immigration, the invention of modern pop music and the British retreat from empire. And he tells the story of the colourful characters of the period, like Harold Macmillan, Kingsley Amis and Paul McCartney, bringing to life the experience of the first post-imperial generation, from the Notting Hill riots to the first Beatles hits, from the Profumo scandal to the cult of James Bond. In this strikingly impressive book, he combines academic verve and insight with colourful, dramatic writing to produce a classic, ground-breaking work that has changed forever how we think about the Sixties.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, British Literature, Sociology, Society, Cultural

1340 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

An English historian, commentator and broadcaster and author of two highly acclaimed books on modern Britain: Never Had It So Good and White Heat. Their follow-up is State of Emergency.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, the first of two giving a social and political history of Britain in the Sixties, has been on my radar for many years. When it finally appeared on kindle, I thought that I could ignore it no longer and decided to finally get around to reading it – I am glad that I did.

Although this is the story of the Sixties, it begins in 1956 with the Suez crisis, and ends as the country heads into 1964. Dominic Sandbrook does a wonderful job of incorporating the cultural and the political. He paints a picture of the country in those post war years, as rationing ended and there was a greater wealth and consumerism. With ITV competing with BBC and supermarkets challenging local shops, people had different choices which affected their everyday lives. However, this is still a society which clung to traditional views and politics. Even as Britain coped with its changed perception within the world, there is a longing for traditionalism and opposition to the influence of the US, especially on the young.

The book begins with Macmillan seemingly safe as Prime Minister, but he is rocked by major events and scandal – particularly the Profumo affair has a real impact on his influence. Along with the Cold War, the threat of atomic war, the European Union, the changing Empire and immigration, satire was also an up and coming influence of public opinion. At the end of this book, we have Harold Wilson as the leader of the Labour Party and it is obvious that political change is coming – and welcomed by most.

Along with major events, we have all the cultural events that were important during those years; from rock and roll to the literary scene, the ‘Angry Young Men’ of film and theatre, television and radio, the Cambridge Spies, James Bond, Harry Palmer, John le Carre and, of course, the Beatles. As we head into the early 1960’s, the huge impact of popular music still has to be felt. As late as 1962, there are those saying that Trad Jazz will be the dominant music of the Sixties, until Beatlemania burst onto the scene and into the charts. Of course, in 1964, the British Invasion will begin and London will suddenly swing into the Sixties proper. I look forward to reading the second book, “White Heat,” which begins where this finished. This is social history at its best – readable, enjoyable and full of interesting snippets and humour.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very entertaining and wide ranging history. Starting with Britain emerging from WW2, trying to find its place in the world as its empire declines, Sandbrook covers subjects as diverse as the Cold War, nuclear bombs and CND, literature, theatre, cinema and the emergence of tv, politics (at length, but somehow without sending me to sleep), music, immigration & racism. Along the way he takes in the likes of Suez, the Beatles, SuperMac, the “invention” of chicken tikka masala, James Bond, Profumo and Doctor Who. The blurb on the front of my edition calls this a “a rich treasure chest of a book” which, for once, is spot on.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn't until months after buying this and its sequel White Heat in autumn 2012 that I found out the author was a Tory; already slightly regretting the purchase of these huge tomes, I was even less keen after that but still wanted to read about the era in detail. Always alert for right-wing bias whilst reading the book, I was usually pleasantly surprised - for example Sandbrook's assessment of contentious issues like immigration, trade unions and the EEC was even-handed if not actually leaning to the left and he presented many statistics and arguments in favour of them (at the time). He made Harold Macmillan incredibly likeable; I already knew of him as probably the most progressive Conservative PM we've ever had but knew little about him as a person.

A few other biases were, however, present. Sandbrook evidently dislikes CND folkies, Tony Benn and perhaps most oddly and vehemently, the novelist Colin Macinnes. Macinnes comes in for much stick for being a posh class tourist and for exoticising and positive-stereotyping West Indian immigrants.
(I read Macinnes' Absolute Beginners before finishing this book and what it seems to me to show is a stage in the evolution of attitudes: as well as an enduring crush on a white girl who mostly sleeps with black men, the late-teens narrator has genuine friendships with black and Jewish people; they are individual people to him, and he is prepared to be injured when standing up to racist thugs on their behalf. It's just that he can't stop mentioning his friends' races, which seems like a legacy of pre-Second World War essentialism.)
Given some of Sandbrook's own mildly questionable vocab choices (though generally fair and liberal attitude) when discussing immigrant people, I'd guess that he borrowed the "exoticising" criticism from somewhere else as extra ammo against a writer he already disliked and whose work probably can't be ignored when discussing social change in late 50s and early 60s Britain. He also doesn't appear entirely comfortable with gay men; their legal and social situation gets a few pages within the section on spies, after the story of Burgess and Maclean (the chapter later devotes 20 pages to Ian Fleming's works alone) and, invariably referring to them as homosexuals, he reports media slurs of the day in a sort of free indirect style, sounding not so much academically detached as perhaps slightly in agreement.

With big books, even when they have problems like that (or the excessively detailed chapter on the succession of Alec Douglas-Home) there can be so much right with them in the other 650-odd pages that without notes it's easy to forget the flaws. And this, generally, is readable and marvellously comprehensive. Often reading two pages made me feel as if I'd read at least ten, so dense is the information. When I knew subjects reasonably well - British New Wave films and pop music - he did seem a little obvious in presentation with one or two good bits missed out; still I always learned something I didn't already know, and you can't include absolutely everything, even in a book this size. Those chapters served as a barometer and I was confident that this was generally a very good and comprehensive overview of politics, culture and society of the time, albeit one focused on England rather than "Britain".

Sandbrook's general take on the time is about continuity more than change: most people were "squares", and many trends had already appeared in the 1930s only to be interrupted by the war and rationing. I became very aware of reading a historian from the same generation as myself: all the same basic concepts are here which reflect what I was taught, most of which I still like to apply: everything is multifactorial and the product of numerous social, cultural and political currents; individuals can be very interesting but in the greater scheme of things they have relatively little power; there is the scrupulousness not to generalise too much without stats, especially when something is particularly novel; and a scepticism about being presented with big sweeping theories.

Whilst it has some imperfections, this is a great summation of many of the features and preoccupations of the era including new consumer goods and materialism, trade unions, the old-school-tie Establishment, the satire boom, spies both real and fictional, increased homophobia, the rise of television, the Keeler affair, immigration from the Carribbean and the Indian subcontinent, the satire boom, rock n roll, trad jazz and the Beatles, well-paid working class youngsters, the decline of Empire and failure to keep up with Western Europe in modernising industry. And the post-war Butskellite consensus, which for those of us with social-democratic inclinations, seems like the best British party politics has ever been. A time when “Britain was being steered into decline by a group of complacent, snobbish, weary, anachronistic old men” at the same time as work and welfare were easy to find, and cultural and social change was chomping at the bit.

[Geevee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read that covered a wide range of subjects and areas within Mr Sandbrook's first period (1956-63) of his history that will run into the 1980s.

The lead up and the eventual Suez crisis (debacle) sets the scene for a Britain that will begin to question its roots, establishment and direction. Mr Sandbrook covers taxes and the strength of Sterling to the prosperity and consumer boom with a growth in disposable income (for some sections and age groups) with a rise in membership of clubs, the increased prevalence of electricity leading to more refrigerators, TVs and car ownership and holidays.

The author writes with great ease, quality and insight as he discusses literature of period including the unlikely friendship of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, to milk and Expresso (sic) coffee bars; and the scandal of the Profumo affair and the spies and ministers of a wartime generation who acted and sounded differently to literary figures such as James Bond and George Smiley who challenged in outlook, popularity and approach.

There are very readable chapters on youth culture including fashion & music linked to social change. Education, National Service and crime are covered, as is Sandbrook's well reasoned - and supported by this reader's - view that teenagers, rock & roll, records (45s & 33 LPs), TV, radio & magazines/music papers & of course Elvis changed the society...

...but yet it wasn't all as simple or as revolutionary as that, as for many pursuits such as angling and gardening were more popular than buying Beatles records; and across the country the sheer poverty, drudgery and greyness of post-war life in Britain for the majority was a far cry from Having it so Good.

However, as we close with the end of 1963 the Beatles are atop the charts and a Labour Government is just around the corner, and it is clear to see the White Heat (Mr Sandbrook's title of the next volume and future PM Harold Wilson's famous words) of technology and science hanging in the wings for a nation on a great and seismic journey - and as a reader I'm enjoying the ride too.

[Michael Sterckx · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was worried that this was going to be an historical justification for Thatcherism, but Mr Sandbrook managed to keep his political opinions mostly at bay. His dismissing of British New Wave kitchen sink cinema was unfair though and he conveniently overlooked key films such as A Taste Of Honey which countered his argument that they were largely working class, chauvinistic and small c conservative in outlook. The chapter on Profumo was interesting, as he seemed to be trying to deflect the sleaze away from the Conservative party and onto the press and he was also rather snobbish about Christine Keeler as well. His argument that the sixties didn't just come out of nowhere but was the culmination of four decades of modernistic progress is absolutely solid however.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long but a lot of fun.

[John Bithell · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all the books in the series, I found this very readable. The range of material is impressive as is the willingness of the author to challenge common preconceptions and clichés.
Colours in some of the pictures in my mind of the years which were my parents' formative years and which created the backdrop to my own earliest memories.

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book about British politics that I read was Lynne Olson's TROUBLESOME YOUNG MEN, which conveyed strongly the sense of Great Britain was a country--at least in the 1930s--ruled by a few hundred people who all went to high school together. Class is just as important in America, to be sure, but America traditionally has been ruled by lots of smaller elite classes (wealthy New England merchants, South Carolina plantation owners, etc.) that never quite identified the same level of common identity.

I had this thought a lot when reading NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD. Dominic Sandbrook's thesis emphasizes the essential conservatism of the era, to be sure, but Britain struck me as a notably conservative, stable place even by Western standards of the day. So, for example, Sandbrook gives the impression that the loss of empire was never quite as divisive as one might have expected. In France, the war in Algeria sparked a constitutional crisis, the downfall of the Fourth Republic, and an astonishing amount of political violence. In America, the (rather more tenuous) 'loss' of China prompted a scarring political debate that affected foreign policy for a generation. In Britain, it seems like opponents of decolonization couldn't even muster a serious leadership challenge in the Conservative Party.

(The Suez crisis seems to me--and of course I could be wrong, since I'm a novice at British politics--as the exception that proves the rule; of course it ended in humiliation and the downfall of Anthony Eden, but the replacement of one center-right prime minister with another doesn't seem that dramatic to me all things considered.)

The lack of a British equivalent to McCarthyism is pretty striking as well. It's remarkable to me that top officials in Whitehall and 10 Downing Street were able to simply decide not to air their own dirty laundry, and in that way keep a lid on serious controversy. Whether or not Harry Truman might have done that, the fact of the matter is that he could never have gotten away with it.

And perhaps this is why the Cambridge spy ring never quite seemed to be as big a scandal as it deserved to be. Certainly, there seems to have been a general suspicion of 'the Establishment' at that era, and newspapers would print stories about how many British leaders were descended from only four Victorian peers. And I would have imagined that the Profumo scandal, which was both lurid and at least ostensibly connected to national security, would have proved the natural segue. Kim Philby's career seems particularly damning, since he was not only responsible for the deaths of British assets, not only permitted to escape justice entirely by fleeing to Moscow, he was publicly exonerated in Parliament by the sitting Prime Minister.* Surely, this--not the weird sex habits of the upperclass, which couldn't have been that surprising--was the real scandal of the era. But as late as 1963, Harold MacMillan was able to go to Harold Wilson and get the Labour leader to agree to play down the scandal for 'national security.' I found that really remarkable.

*(I'm not saying that MacMillan necessarily did anything wrong; I have no idea, and would love to know more. But it seems like it should have been a big deal.)

Other things that jumped out at me:

- The association between Italian food and impossible sophistication is something that I enjoyed every time it came up.
- I thought it was crazy that nearly half of British homes lacked a bathroom in 1950, but I just looked it up and it was something like 35% lacking bathrooms in America at the same time; I suppose this is a part of the recent past that people just don't think much about.
- So the British New Wave is basically the Four Yorkshiremen sketch on Monty Python played straight, right?
- There's a lot in the book about fears by cultural elites of Americanization of British pop culture (particularly w/r/t rock music, television, and horror comics). What's striking to me is that--aside from the trope that American culture is corrupting Great Britain--their arguments are otherwise exactly the same as those made by American cultural elites.
- John Lennon was a real prick. I suppose I might say this again in my review of the next volume in the series, but seriously, what a prick.

I was generally impressed with Dominic Sandbrook's ability to deliver a pretty complicated historical narrative (including political, social and cultural history) in a way that's engaging and clear even to somebody without a strong background in the subject. I really enjoy British history--I was joking to a friend that it's as interesting as American history but I don't have to feel responsible for any of it--so I am excited to read the rest of the series.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part of Dominic Sandbrook’s history of Britain in the 1960s actually covers 1956-1963. Of course historians these days rarely have a literal view of the calendar (inevitably, we can expect histories of The Noughties to begin on September the 11th, 2001) and given the effect The Suez Crisis had on British prestige, it seems sensible to begin there. Even so there’s a lot of context which needs to be built in, and for the early part of the book George Orwell – who died in 1950 – is one of the most quoted commentators.

Sandbrook looks at the decade both politically and culturally, and the chapters pretty much split between the two. On the whole I think the political chapters are better value, just because there are more interesting points to unearth there. After all, if you’re writing about the origins of The Beatles, James Bond, or even Dr Who – as important as they were – there’s not much more fresh you can say about them. I’m not alone in knowing more about Decca’s assertion that guitar bands were finished or the hiring of Sean Connery, than I do about the Conservative party intrigues which saw Sir Alec Douglas Home become Prime Minister.

The various areas you’d expect to be covered are: angry young men, kitchen sink dramas, the dissolution of The Empire, the third man and Profumo, and the author does a wonderful job in bringing them to life. However many of the commentators are politicians or well known personalities, with a handful of ‘ordinary people’ sprinkled through the text. Although these voices are there, I’m not sure they’re used as skilfully as they are in David Kynaston’s similar ‘Austerity Britain’. (The follow up ‘Family Britain’ is on the shelves now and I’m looking forward to it). However ‘Never Had It So Good’ is a lively piece of history, which puts forward the convincing argument that as much as things seemed to change, Britain remained an incredibly conservative country. No matter what the TV footage shows of Carnaby Street, that was not the experience of the majority of the nation.

‘White Heat’ is the second volume and I will certainly read it soon.

Two anecdotes of this book which particularly made me smile:

Firstly, in 1962 as worries about teenagers spread “the London Union of Youth Clubs, ‘seeking to mould the citizens of tomorrow’, sent a hundred teenage girls on an ‘initiative test’ to spend the night at sea on a ship full of sailors. The point of this exercise was never entirely clear, but it takes little imagination to speculate that the evening did not unfold quite as the youth service would have wished.”

Secondly, at the start of the sixties, as the original rock’n’rollers were tamed – for Britain, we’re talking Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele – many commentators were convinced that the dominant musical style of the 1960s would be Trad Jazz, and that its proponents would be the stars of the decade. And then along came John, Paul, George and Ringo.

[Bob Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a big fan of postwar British cinema, I enjoyed this immensely!

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has pretty much all you could want to know about British life in the 50s and early 60s; it’s a book that does what it says on the tin and it does it very well. Books, film, fashion, TV, food, music, immigration, race relations, politics, housing, the commercialisation of society and much more. One of Sandbrook’s core messages though, which seems to be justifiable given his analysis, is that whilst society experienced massive transformation in the 50s and early 60s, the people of the country didn’t change as much as is supposed. Traditionalism, reminiscing about empire and apprehension about the speed of change characterised much more of this period than previous analysis suggest. One of the core strengths of this book is how Sandbrook handles these attitudes. He does not criticise, nor does he promote, a particular viewpoint on the changes to society.

I am not usually a social history kind of guy as my reading history will attest to but I read it partly because of it being recommended and partly because I began to listen to Sandbrook’s podcast with Tom Holland. I’m glad I did. Whilst the political chapters were my favourite (probably inevitable) it was genuinely interesting to learn about the history of some of the core parts of our culture that go unsaid. The development of British takeaways for example is something that no one learns about but is a genuinely interesting topic.

Undoubtedly there were some parts/chapters I found less interesting. The discussion about British drama and theatre was not to my particular interests for example. I’ve rated it a 4 rather than a 5 mostly for this reason. The size of the book (coming in at nearly 750 pages excluding notes/references) is certainly substantial and it did feel at some points like I was making no progress. This also contributes to the 4 rather than 5 rating.

Nevertheless, the book was not a slog, I did not feel like many pages were wasted nor do I feel like one topic got an unjustified proportion of page time compared to other topics. Sandbrook’s writing style is enjoyable, simplistic (but not overly so) and he is capable of using sarcasm and humour which provides a nice flow to what could’ve been an excessive info dump. Furthermore, I do not feel the author demonstrated a political bias which would’ve been easy given the subject matter. He provides a fair hearing to both sides of the political spectrum: Macmillan is portrayed as both a shrewd political operator who it is easy to like and sympathise with whilst also being shown to overly interfere in government departments and being a bit of a paranoid wreck. Whilst I imagine much of the focus on Labour will be found in book two (Wilson’s portrayal in this book is almost that of a main character appearing in a trailer- we know big things are coming and are only getting a sneak preview here), Sandbrook still manages to demonstrate the skills and intellect of men like Gaitskell. Sandbrook’s discussion of the decline of empire is particularly well done. He does not lament its loss but does explain the very real and raw emotions which understandably still existed among many people (such as Ian Fleming).

Overall, this is a genuinely impressive work. Whilst its size is daunting, it is a worthwhile read because it deals with the history of so many things we take for granted and assume to be a natural part of life. There is indeed a historical story about the development of coffee shops, who knew?!?

I will certainly be reading the remainder of the series, although given their size I will be spreading them out throughout the next year.

Throughout recommended. 4/5*

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sandbrook really is a tour de force of a historian. Having only known him previously from 'The Rest is History', he struck me more as a jolly good, Shropshire bloke (which admittedly he loses none of here), but not so much as a thoroughbred historian. However, I have been proved conclusively wrong. Not only a great teller of stories, Sandbrook manages to find a via media (if you will) of the history of Britain. It is not as a glorious trail towards Parliamentary hyper-liberalism, nor as a frieze of stolidity and conservatism, but rather as a blustering, inept state that found itself completely dazzled by consumerism and the rocks and shakes of modern culture. Always a pragmatic historian, Sandbrook adeptly dispels the myth of Britain as some kind of revolutionary culture bomb during the 60s, totally out of control, but rather seeks to find the via media of reason.

However, despite what is a very academic analysis, he never loses his wit or flare. Clearly, this isn't dry history meant for the shelves of scholars, and nor was it intended to be. But nonetheless, he makes a very serious point about the significance of the post-Suez age for the development of Britain. The signal of imperial decline, the symptom of a failing economy, the building blocks of the 'bloated state' all come from here.

A superb history of this period; and might I add, it is an absolute doorwedge beyond belief!

[Tom Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanbrook covers the transformation that Britain underwent throughout 1950s and 60s with an infectious sense of style, pace and humour - particularly throughout the book's more political chapters. But the work as a whole lacks any sense of narrative cohesion, and in many ways becomes the victim of its all-embracing scope. I would have given it three stars had it not been for Sandbrook's brief study of the 'special relationship', in which he highlights that a majority of Brits viewed Americans as 'adolescent', 'materialistic' and 'slightly hysterical'; three adjectives the Americans would do well to consider if they ever go for a French-style national motto.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes a lot to keep a reader entertained over 740 pages of Social and Political history. Dominic Sandbrook does it with ease.

We cover the fast changing world of the lates fifties through to the Profumo Affair and the close of 1963. If you are watching the Crown, we are talking S2.

And the writers of the Crown have either used this book or the same reference material, as there are many parallels with this series - starting at Suez & ending with Macmillan resigning.

Its a super fast moving time period for everything from class, to sex, to technology, to leisure time and Sandbrook documents it well, jumping between politics and culture effortlessly. Much attention to detail and if you make notes, you come out of it with tonnes of references for further exploration.

I shall be forever grateful for the book for pointing out Hancocks Half Hour. I've watched S6 and its timeless, standing up to any classic comedies.

Will move onto White Heat that documents the rest of the sixties. Might wait until S3 of the Crown.

[Stephanie Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book! I felt as if I was living through everything described. Mr. Sandbrook works very hard to leave no literary or cultural stone unturned.This work of history covers Britain from the Suez Crisis to Dr. Who. It's Sandbrook's ability to interweave all these strands in very readable prose that is so amazing. He covers the administrations of Anthony Eden and Harold MacMillan. He talks about "The Angry Young Men" both on stage and in literature and gives an interesting account of why James Bond was so popular and so necessary to the British sense of self. He paints a fairly unattractive portrait of David Frost and discusses the origins of Dr. Who. The great scandals of the day (John Profumo, the defection of Kim Philby) are also described.
I'm conscious that I'm just listing things here, but it is really difficult to convey the richness of the book without producing a much longer review. If you're interested in contemporary British history, this is a great place to start.

[Bevan Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of Sandbrook's 'post-war' series, this is well researched, full of detail and covers a diverse array of material. It escapes the fixation of many history books with politics (I had to wait a long time for an account of the Profumo Affair) although gives creditable coverage. The sections on culture and social history are interesting and the book is a better read for the fact that it has a mild thesis running through it (that of challenging the belief that changes in social attitudes and quality of life were powerful themes in the period).

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was worried when I started this book--more than 700 pages on such a short period of time. I'm used to massive histories--but not usually on such a small period of time. But Sandbrook did an excellent job. I criticized a book I read recently for the strange way it jumped from cultural to political and back. Sandbrook manages to show the entanglement of the two in a much more vivid way.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sixties was, indeed, one of the transformative times of world’s history. Britain too, were also caught in this tumultuous period. This author of this book, while discussing Britain’s history during the sixties, found it quite appropriate to start his narration with The Suez debacle, the moment when British Imperialism was finally handed its final nail on its coffin. The subsequent Conservative administration under Harold MacMillan, the nervous, cuckolded, yet blessed with supreme oratorical ability and utter ruthlessness when it comes to clinging to power, presided over the boom of British economy, with consumerism galore, which unfortunately was built under irresponsible inflation, caving in to labour unions, and ultimately squandered Britain’s comparative advantages over its war-devastated, neighboring countries. The author also asserts, the most interesting statement in my opinion, despite numerous and revolutionary social, cultural and economical changes, British society was, ultimately, still a relatively conservative society.

While the backstabbing politics under MacMillan’s administration remained the main attraction, other interesting social cultural aspects of Britain’s early sixties were also discussed, things like James Bond, that ultimate expression of British Jingoism and men’s escapism, the rise of television, The Beatles, rock ‘n roll and other sorts of counterculture, the supposed sexual decadency of the ruling class, which was best illustrated by the Profumo Affair, all were discussed in great detail, although many escaped my interest.

The book ended with the ascension of Alec Douglas-Home, a figure that ticks my interest, for he was the last Lord who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain, an intrigue that showed how rotten and corrupt the old boy system of Conservative Party at the time, with once again, much tired and plagued with illness MacMillan played his hand superbly. The choice of Lord Home as leader, showed how unprepared the Tories were to let go its old image in face of modern professionalism, a fact that Labour’s Harold Wilson, with its ‘white heat’ of technology as slogans quick to pounce upon. I expected nothing less from the sequel of this book.

[Nordicadventurer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the first in the series of post war British history from Dominic Sandbrook, covering years 1956-63. I studied modern European history and politics at university but British Political History was taught in such a tediously dull manner, that I remember very little. I was a bit apprehensive at re-visiting the topic twenty years later and I worried at first that the length of the book at 900+ pages would be an un-necessary dragging out of eight years of history. However, Sandbrook's lively writing style and well selected anecdotes meant that my interest was rarely lost, and I learned a lot of interesting facts that become talking points among friends and led to some nostalgic conversations with my mother, who was a child during this time period. The mixing of political history with art, culture and social commentary on the period really helped me to get a feeling for what it was like to live in this era, and also how it has shaped the Britain we have today.

It felt like an achievement to finish this weighty volume, but it was not at all laborious to read. Now I'm really looking forward to the next in the series!

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this after White Heat, the second volume of Sandbrook's history of post-war Britain. I say that because I found White Heat irritating both in methodology and perspective, so I was ready to have an equally negative reaction to Never Had It So Good. In the event, I found it a much better book, less reliant on tabloid-style newspaper sources and less opinionated (though Sandbrook certainly doesn't hold back and his comments are often acerbically funny). I suspect it's because he's less partisan about the early stages of the pop culture and that there's simply less internal personal drama in the slow collapse of the Macmillan government in comparison with the ongoing soap opera of Harold Wilson's years in office. Both volumes contain a lot of pure information, which is why I read them.

[Nigel Kotani · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my review of 'State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974', which applies equally to this book, other than that it covers a different period and that, because that period was before I was born, it didn't trigger nostalgia in me in the same way. The fact that I enjoyed this book as much as the one which covered the period I remember is an indication of quite how good it is. This is history writing at its best.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't quite up to the standard of the other Sandbrooks I've read. Some chapters were distinctly laboured.

That said, others are utterly enthralling, especially those about the spy scandal and the Profumo affair. It was also interesting to see names mentioned, almost in passing, of people who became very famous later on.

[Richard Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough examination of society, culture, and politics of the period.

[Jonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is too long (at times the chapters on cultural history feel like the author simply wrote down everything he extracted from a primary source), it’s still a very well-knitted together history of the period. In practice, the book builds in enough context from the immediate post-WWII period to explain the psychology around Suez and the initial application to join the EEC, and makes sense of how domestic politics unfolded during the period. It’s probably at its strongest in drawing out the confusion inherent between a society becoming richer and more tolerant while still being fundamentally conservative. I’m not sure if I’ll make it through the subsequent books covering the rest of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but this works well as a stand-alone history.

[Matthew Tyas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and balanced account of the first half of the sixties, largely split up into political history and an analysis of popular media trends.

I love the broad approach, the sheer number of different events the book covers, and also the specificity that Sandbrook brings to key events when needed.

Very thorough, informative and entertaining.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly entertaining book. Having grown up in the period described in the book, From Suez to The Beatles, and having read quite a number of varied histories of the period I thought I was well up on it. I have to say that Dominic Sandbrook has shattered that illusion completely. This is another slant on the period, much more objective, not at all jaundiced or emphatic, quite balanced.

The book contains a wealth of detail on each of the episodes in describes, which together make up a very detailed and comprehensive picture of the events, the timescales, the locales and the personalities involved. The Profumo affair, with which I thought I was au fait, is addressed and explained in an extremely clearly, managing to get the whole thing into its proper perspective and clarifies the effect of the media and the sensationalist headlines of the time. Similarly Sandbrook is able to look quite coolly at the music of the period culminating in The Beatles and remove a lot of the mystique, which does help one to take a longer view in a clearer historical perspective, by pointing out for example that gardening as a pastime was much more popular that listening to The Beatles!

In short this is a thoroughly enjoyable, well written, detailed and picturesque overview of an interesting period in the history of the UK pre-Brexit and I cannot wait to start the second volume in the series...

[Alex Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central idea - that the 60s were not a radical disruption of what came before, but much more of a continuation - is interesting and well argued. It’s also interesting to see political action so well situated with cultural events (and vice versa). But despite an interest in reframing history, this extends more to the narrative than the characters or the attitudes: it still mostly focusses on people you’ve heard about before (in a way the entire book is viewed through the prism of Macmillan) and it doesn’t work hard enough to expand the scope of what’s covered. There are some nods to a more social history based approach but it’s still basically the “great man” theory. It’s not that comfortable with a wider vision of history, and tilts into misogyny when talking about Christine Keeler. For all the author’s dislike of CND and “folkies” as inauthentic middle class tourists, a more authentic panoply of voices is lacking from the book as a whole that claims to be a history of a whole country and a whole age.

[Nick Harriss · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Read - This was an interesting and quite in-depth history of Britain between 1956 and 1964. I found the political elements enlightening, removing some of the preconceptions, both positive and negative that I had. It is a long book, and certain elements are covered in rather too much detail, but I guess it is always hard to pitch. Definitely recommended.

Second Read - I also bought this book as an audiobook about 8 years after I first read it. It remains an excellent read, and certainly well suited to the audiobook format, and while almost 40 hours long, is entertaining throughout.

[Xander Ring · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an American who has been visiting the UK for almost 30 years this book explained a lot to me. How did Britain start to imitate and resemble the U.S.? When did it become such a consumer society? Why is it so different from other European countries? Never Had it So Good tells the tale and lays the groundwork for the decades to come. The minutiae of everyday life in Britain during this period is examined with humor and insight. History just as I like it. There are three more books in this historical series and I am going to savor each and every one of them.

[AskHistorians]

You can read this after Call the Midwife, because they go together. Sandbrook's monumental history of Britain from 1956 to 1962 explores whether, and how, Britain had "never had it so good" - how Britain emerged from the austerity of the war years into a world of consumerism and the stirrings of change. But - as Jennifer Worth shows us - not everyone had it so good. Sandbrook also balances his social history with his political history very well, and relates complicated events like the Suez crisis in a way that's easy to understand.