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Dominic Sandbrook’s History of Britain #5
Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982
The acclaimed historian of modern Britain, Dominic Sandbrook, tells the story of the early 1980 the most dramatic, colourful and controversial years in our recent history. Margaret Thatcher had come to power in 1979 with a daring plan to reverse Britain's decline into shabbiness and chaos. But as factories closed their doors, dole queues lengthened and the inner cities exploded in flames, would her radical medicine rescue the Sick Man of Europe - or kill it off? Vivid, surprising and gloriously entertaining, Dominic Sandbrook's new book recreates the decisive turning point in Britain's recent story. For some people this was an age of unparalleled opportunity, the heyday of computers and credit cards, snooker, Sloane Rangers and Spandau Ballet. Yet for others it was an era of shocking bitterness, as industries collapsed, working-class communities buckled and the Labour Party tore itself apart. And when Argentine forces seized the Falkland Islands, it seemed the final humiliation for a wounded, unhappy country, its fortunes now standing on a knife-edge. Here are the early 1980s in all their gaudy glory. This is the story of Tony Benn, Ian Botham and Princess Diana; Joy Division, Chariots of Fire, the Austin Metro and Juliet Bravo; wine bars, Cruise missiles, the ZX Spectrum and the battle for the Falklands. And towering above them all, the most divisive Prime Minister of modern times - the Iron Lady.
976 pages, Hardcover
Published October 3, 2019
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1187 people want to read
About the author
Dominic Sandbrook
46 books561 followersAn 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
September 13, 2019
I have read several of Dominic Sandbrook’s books before and so I was delighted to have the chance to read his latest. This book covers the period 1979-1982 (incidentally, 1982 was the year I met my husband, so this is a pretty special period for me).
This is, as far as I am aware, the fifth in a series of books, which take Britain from 1976 to 1982. This started with, “Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles,” followed by, “White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties 1964-70,” “State of Emergency: The Way We Were 1970-1974,” and “Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain,1974-1979.”
The book is split into four parts and covers politics, music and social history. Reading this took me back to the era of Thatcher, the Falklands, the New Romantics, the Brixton Riots and more. Obviously, I like Sandbrook’s style, as I have read previous books by him, but, although this is a huge book, I found it totally enjoyable and easy to read; informative, interesting and a balanced account of this period of history.
This is, as far as I am aware, the fifth in a series of books, which take Britain from 1976 to 1982. This started with, “Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles,” followed by, “White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties 1964-70,” “State of Emergency: The Way We Were 1970-1974,” and “Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain,1974-1979.”
The book is split into four parts and covers politics, music and social history. Reading this took me back to the era of Thatcher, the Falklands, the New Romantics, the Brixton Riots and more. Obviously, I like Sandbrook’s style, as I have read previous books by him, but, although this is a huge book, I found it totally enjoyable and easy to read; informative, interesting and a balanced account of this period of history.
February 12, 2020
In the Preface Dominic Sandbrook writes: 'This is absolutely not a partisan book. I have no wish to waste the reader's time or my own, by picking sides'. He could have fooled me!
His portrayal of Mrs Thatcher is partisan to a fault. Opposition voices are dismissed as belonging to weirdos and faint hearts.Don't take my word for it, read it and see what you think.
And it is worth reading. Sandbrook writes with great style and wit about a crucial period in Briain's post-war history that older readers will remember well. He covers most of the significant developments in all walks of life as he did in his previous books.
But to pretend that his account of the politics of the period is 'fair' is beyond parody.
Before the paperback version is published my advice would be to leave the book as it but to please remove the nonsensical claims to impartiality from the Preface and let the reader make up their own mind.
His portrayal of Mrs Thatcher is partisan to a fault. Opposition voices are dismissed as belonging to weirdos and faint hearts.Don't take my word for it, read it and see what you think.
And it is worth reading. Sandbrook writes with great style and wit about a crucial period in Briain's post-war history that older readers will remember well. He covers most of the significant developments in all walks of life as he did in his previous books.
But to pretend that his account of the politics of the period is 'fair' is beyond parody.
Before the paperback version is published my advice would be to leave the book as it but to please remove the nonsensical claims to impartiality from the Preface and let the reader make up their own mind.
January 27, 2022
From the preface:
This is absolutely not a partisan book. I have no wish to waste the reader's time or my own, by picking sides.Yeah, that's a big ol lie. Sandbrook's portrayal of Maggie Thatcher may-she-rest-in-piss is INCREDIBLY partisan: in favor of, to be specific.
December 10, 2019
At nearly 900 pages, this takes a long time to get through a 3 year period. This has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it means you get a lot of detail about economic, political, and cultural history of the time. On the other, it means you get a lot of detail and analysis--occasionally not entirely necessary or a bit repetitive. (Do we need to relive every match of the 1981 Ashes, an innings at a time?)
Sandbrook isn't entirely shy about his opinions, and one of them is that Margaret Thatcher has been flattened into a caricature: the Iron Lady in her blue suit and handbag, yelling "No!" There's a great deal of truth in this. It's also true that she faced a great deal of sexism and classism that her left wing critics didn't always want to acknowledge. He spends a lot of time analyzing Thatcher and her policies, and how our perception with 40 years of hindsight has scrubbed out any nuance, particularly in her early years. It's a worthy reminder. However, he occasionally labors the point, and may lean a little too much into excusing her. That's not to say he's a complete Thatcher apologist: he acknowledges her flaws and errors. There's also certainly a case--and he makes it well--that many of the issues Thatcher faced were structural and that no administration could have completely prevented deindustrialization and the rise in unemployment. Regardless of whether you wind up agreeing with his economic conclusions, there's a great deal of discussion material here that will help you argue with them.
His views of the far left are pretty clearly critical. Foot is portrayed as an honest man who was incompetent to lead Labour, but Benn and Livingstone are savaged (and Sandbrook doesn't miss a chance to bring up Jeremy Corbyn when he's peripherally involved).
Overall, this is an enjoyable continuation to the series.
Sandbrook isn't entirely shy about his opinions, and one of them is that Margaret Thatcher has been flattened into a caricature: the Iron Lady in her blue suit and handbag, yelling "No!" There's a great deal of truth in this. It's also true that she faced a great deal of sexism and classism that her left wing critics didn't always want to acknowledge. He spends a lot of time analyzing Thatcher and her policies, and how our perception with 40 years of hindsight has scrubbed out any nuance, particularly in her early years. It's a worthy reminder. However, he occasionally labors the point, and may lean a little too much into excusing her. That's not to say he's a complete Thatcher apologist: he acknowledges her flaws and errors. There's also certainly a case--and he makes it well--that many of the issues Thatcher faced were structural and that no administration could have completely prevented deindustrialization and the rise in unemployment. Regardless of whether you wind up agreeing with his economic conclusions, there's a great deal of discussion material here that will help you argue with them.
His views of the far left are pretty clearly critical. Foot is portrayed as an honest man who was incompetent to lead Labour, but Benn and Livingstone are savaged (and Sandbrook doesn't miss a chance to bring up Jeremy Corbyn when he's peripherally involved).
Overall, this is an enjoyable continuation to the series.
June 5, 2020
This is the fifth instalment of Dominic Sandbrook's magisterial survey of life in Britain since the 1950s. Who Dares Wins opens with a bang. We hear about the conclusion of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege and the rescue of the hostages by the SAS. The motto of the elite special forces unit provides the book’s title. Who Dares Wins chronicles the early years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership. According to Sandbrook, these three years were the most exciting and controversial in the UK's postwar history. Economically, they marked a watershed. The country was buckling from the postwar consensus of high taxation, nationalisation, and powerful trade unions.
They were also a time of political upheaval. Thatcher moved away from the postwar Keynesian consensus, tolerating high unemployment as the price of defeating inflation. We also hear about widespread protests against unemployment, which saw the People’s March for Jobs and riots in Brixton and Toxteth. Plus the protest of the Greenham women. Sandbrook goes onto explain about Ken Livingston and the battles between central government and left-wing councils. Not to mention the formation of a new party: the SDP.
There's no doubt that Sandbrook has immersed himself in the politics and culture of the era. For example, he claims to have read every edition of all the main newspapers. And his diligence shows. This full and rich history crams a staggering number of events into its 976 pages. Had he confined this book to a discussion of early 1980s politics, it might have been a tough read. Fortunately, Sandbrook also evokes the sights, sounds and smells of the period. He reminds us how awful restaurant food was back then. Charts the rise of the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. Discusses the proliferation of wine bars, and provides an overview of bands such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran that catered to their clientele's aspirations. Not only that he vividly recounts major sporting events. These include Botham's Ashes, plus the Ovett-Coe 800m and 1500m finals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
He also displays a breathtaking knowledge of TV shows; the more trivial the better. Observing the different ways in which both Fawlty Towers and To the Manor Born, though television comedies, tell as much about the state of the nation as the BBC’s Play for Today.
So, it continues in this vividly panoramic history ranging from high politics to ordinary life. From Falklands to the F-plan diet, from steel strikes to Sloane Rangers, Sandbrook covers every facet of the early 1980s. But the thing that most defined this era was the rebirth of a patriotic populism. Thatcher's victory in the Falklands, he suggests, prompted a sea change in national psychology. Talk of decline gave way to bombast. Phrases such as "Our Country at its Best" and "The British are Back!" became common. Even the Austin Metro was a British car to beat the world. "Perhaps it was here," Sandbrook reflects, "that the road to Brexit began." This parting thought is something to chew on while we wait for the next course of this richly satisfying historical feast.
They were also a time of political upheaval. Thatcher moved away from the postwar Keynesian consensus, tolerating high unemployment as the price of defeating inflation. We also hear about widespread protests against unemployment, which saw the People’s March for Jobs and riots in Brixton and Toxteth. Plus the protest of the Greenham women. Sandbrook goes onto explain about Ken Livingston and the battles between central government and left-wing councils. Not to mention the formation of a new party: the SDP.
There's no doubt that Sandbrook has immersed himself in the politics and culture of the era. For example, he claims to have read every edition of all the main newspapers. And his diligence shows. This full and rich history crams a staggering number of events into its 976 pages. Had he confined this book to a discussion of early 1980s politics, it might have been a tough read. Fortunately, Sandbrook also evokes the sights, sounds and smells of the period. He reminds us how awful restaurant food was back then. Charts the rise of the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. Discusses the proliferation of wine bars, and provides an overview of bands such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran that catered to their clientele's aspirations. Not only that he vividly recounts major sporting events. These include Botham's Ashes, plus the Ovett-Coe 800m and 1500m finals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
He also displays a breathtaking knowledge of TV shows; the more trivial the better. Observing the different ways in which both Fawlty Towers and To the Manor Born, though television comedies, tell as much about the state of the nation as the BBC’s Play for Today.
So, it continues in this vividly panoramic history ranging from high politics to ordinary life. From Falklands to the F-plan diet, from steel strikes to Sloane Rangers, Sandbrook covers every facet of the early 1980s. But the thing that most defined this era was the rebirth of a patriotic populism. Thatcher's victory in the Falklands, he suggests, prompted a sea change in national psychology. Talk of decline gave way to bombast. Phrases such as "Our Country at its Best" and "The British are Back!" became common. Even the Austin Metro was a British car to beat the world. "Perhaps it was here," Sandbrook reflects, "that the road to Brexit began." This parting thought is something to chew on while we wait for the next course of this richly satisfying historical feast.
December 23, 2021
Despite its 800+ pages, this was a very satisfying read. The years 1979-1982 were formative years for me in particular and were certainly those in my life where I spent the most time watching telly and absorbed in British culture more generally. The author does a great job of exploring the cultural history of time: from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to Chariots of Fire while he even flirts with that obsession of the Chart Music podcast in debating where decades really begin and end.
That said, for all the entertaining writing style, I did fundamentally disagree with much of the book. He does try to be balanced but he’s far too kind on Margaret Thatcher for my liking, demonises Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone to a lopsided degree (while admitting that both had charm) and the final sections on the Falklands/Malvinas conflict are gung-ho to the point of parody – no surprise given that Max Hastings is the main person he quotes. I’m far from taking a 100% anti-Falklands War standpoint – after all, the Argentinian junta had ‘disappeared’ countless left wingers and activists and were pretty much fully paid up Fascists – but more balance would have been needed. Indeed, on Ulster in particular, Sandbrook’s accounts of the hunger strikes could almost have been plucked from the pages of the UK right wing press at the time, with too little acknowledgement that there was a political cause underlying the IRA’s campaign.
Thatcher, for all her unthinking evil, is painted as decisive and (unlike Boris Johnson) incorruptible and it’s hard to argue with that. Sandbrook does not gloss over the misery of a period that saw unemployment rise to 3 million and the shutdown of British industry and manufacturing. One of the best sections underlines the importance of the eclipse of Tory ‘wets’ such as Ian Gilmour and Jim Prior in favour of Norman Tebbit and Nigel Lawson – a crucial phase. Sport – for once in a History book – is not ignored and there is richly nostalgic discussion of snooker and the 1981 Ashes. The nuance of party politics in Britain is interesting up to a point – the rise of the Social Democratic Party and some Labour infighting that makes Jeremy Corbyn and his opponents look tame – but in a long book, some of the detail really should have been excised.
So – well worth reading as long as one approaches it with open eyes – in the main, Sandbrook, for all his burgeoning well-fed ‘old duffer’ tendencies, does a good job of creating a clean slate for the reader to interpret.
That said, for all the entertaining writing style, I did fundamentally disagree with much of the book. He does try to be balanced but he’s far too kind on Margaret Thatcher for my liking, demonises Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone to a lopsided degree (while admitting that both had charm) and the final sections on the Falklands/Malvinas conflict are gung-ho to the point of parody – no surprise given that Max Hastings is the main person he quotes. I’m far from taking a 100% anti-Falklands War standpoint – after all, the Argentinian junta had ‘disappeared’ countless left wingers and activists and were pretty much fully paid up Fascists – but more balance would have been needed. Indeed, on Ulster in particular, Sandbrook’s accounts of the hunger strikes could almost have been plucked from the pages of the UK right wing press at the time, with too little acknowledgement that there was a political cause underlying the IRA’s campaign.
Thatcher, for all her unthinking evil, is painted as decisive and (unlike Boris Johnson) incorruptible and it’s hard to argue with that. Sandbrook does not gloss over the misery of a period that saw unemployment rise to 3 million and the shutdown of British industry and manufacturing. One of the best sections underlines the importance of the eclipse of Tory ‘wets’ such as Ian Gilmour and Jim Prior in favour of Norman Tebbit and Nigel Lawson – a crucial phase. Sport – for once in a History book – is not ignored and there is richly nostalgic discussion of snooker and the 1981 Ashes. The nuance of party politics in Britain is interesting up to a point – the rise of the Social Democratic Party and some Labour infighting that makes Jeremy Corbyn and his opponents look tame – but in a long book, some of the detail really should have been excised.
So – well worth reading as long as one approaches it with open eyes – in the main, Sandbrook, for all his burgeoning well-fed ‘old duffer’ tendencies, does a good job of creating a clean slate for the reader to interpret.
April 8, 2021
The author displays his usual fluent narrative style and a nice appreciation of popular culture weaved into the serious political and economic history of this short period. However, he could not manage to cover the three years in less than 844 pages. I would have welcomed some pruning, and the book is too long by at least a third.
March 27, 2022
I found this 900 page book to be intensely enjoyable. It is almost encyclopedic of its coverage of Britain in the four years it covers (1979-1982). The narrative runs from Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1979 through the end of the Falklands War.
The sheer size of the book allows Dominic Sandbrook (whose breezy and professional audiobook narration was a real positive) to cover many aspects of this era that are less familiar to American readers, such as the crack-up of the Labour party and the struggles of British Leyland.
This is popular history, easily consumable by most readers. But it is not less impressive for that. I will strongly consider picking up the other books in this series.
The sheer size of the book allows Dominic Sandbrook (whose breezy and professional audiobook narration was a real positive) to cover many aspects of this era that are less familiar to American readers, such as the crack-up of the Labour party and the struggles of British Leyland.
This is popular history, easily consumable by most readers. But it is not less impressive for that. I will strongly consider picking up the other books in this series.
August 12, 2024
Forty two hours later I have to say that despite being objectively incredibly long, it really didn't feel quite as long as it could have been, never got dull. Would recommend if you have a working week of your life to spare.
April 9, 2025
A tour de force as Dominic himself would say. Took me five months but really enjoyed this- in particular I liked that it covered wider sociological topics rather than purely politics. Will certainly read his previous books in this series but also really hope he does the rest of the 80s!
May 4, 2024
Probably one of the most exhaustive history books I've ever read
July 27, 2022
Audiobook read by the author. I picked this up because I'm a fan of his and Tom Holland's podcast, The Rest is History, and their excellent series on the Falklands War drew heavily from the latter chapters of this book. Sandbrook is as engaging a narrator as I'd hoped, his dedication to impressions add a lot. The book is an absolute tome, insanely detailed, covering every aspect of Britain in the early 80s: politics, music, fashion, sport, the economy, war, cultural movements, etc, etc. It is engaging an often very funny, though I admit I skipped a couple of the political chapters and let some others drift over me, paying less-than-rapt attention (but seeing how massive this thing is I'm going to forgive myself and count it towards my yearly goal anyway lol). It covers polarising topics - such as Thatcher and the Falklands - in an pretty objective way, which I liked. Will probably check out his previous 4 books eventually. Oh, and the Adrian Mole epigrams and references were excellent.
July 3, 2021
Once again, I'm maybe a bit overgenerous in awarding a book five stars. But not very overgenerous!
The book begins and ends with accounts of the British military in action. It opens with an account of the Iranian Embassy siege in London in 1980, something those of us alive at the time probably won't forget watching, open mouthed, on television.
The last 100 pages or so are what win that fifth star with their utterly enthralling account of the Falklands War. The military, political, and cultural aspects of it are covered with a thoroughness and an acerbic wit few other writers could match.
Highly recommended!
The book begins and ends with accounts of the British military in action. It opens with an account of the Iranian Embassy siege in London in 1980, something those of us alive at the time probably won't forget watching, open mouthed, on television.
The last 100 pages or so are what win that fifth star with their utterly enthralling account of the Falklands War. The military, political, and cultural aspects of it are covered with a thoroughness and an acerbic wit few other writers could match.
Highly recommended!
March 21, 2024
I may be a certain kind of ideal reader for this book: an Anglophile who reads more old stuff than new and so is intrinsically invested in 1980s Britain while knowing hardly anything about it. The narrative suspense in this book is mostly real suspense for me; I don't know what's coming.
But it's really dramatic. And really suspenseful. And really good reading.
But it's really dramatic. And really suspenseful. And really good reading.
July 1, 2023
I do not encourage violence. But if you need a tactical blunt-force instrument, this whopper of a book will come in handy. Hard to believe that it covers only four years or that so much, written in so many words, has no dull moments.
It is now a cliche that anytime Britain does something loopy for commentators to pop out and intone: 'is this imperial nostalgia?' Who Dares Wins suggests that it isn't quite that.
Britons can justly be said to be amnesiacs about their empire. That isn't the case for WW2, when--all together now--Britain stood alone. If WW2 was the apotheosis of British history, then the reversal at Suez was their nadir. Afterwards, the country drifted, seemingly barricaded on Decline Boulevard. The narrative spinners, at least, were only too keen to sell that impression.
Reich's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said:
All-action Maggie was the British statesman who grasped the garment of an age when Britons had enough of the old ways. She was the avatar of the populist nationalism that still dominates British politics and foreign policy. That Britons dare to win. That they stand, often alone, in the world against tyranny. That Europeans are 'namby-pambies' who can be handbagged into submission. All those are uniquely Thatcherite views. So next time the Britons make you scratch your head, blame Thatcher! RIP her.
While the departed PM looms large over the book, we are spared the tedium of nearly 800 pages of her frankly tiresome earnestness. Oh, where to start with the list of characters? Just know that it's got everything from James Bond and World Championship snooker to a little-known leftie called Jeremy Corbyn in between a tonne of popstars who mean nothing to me but were probably the future, once. I mean, who calls themselves Durant-Durant? In all, Britons can be proud of the mosaic drawn. Well, except for the football hooligans. But, then again, they solved that. So 1-1.
This is top-notch narrative history. It tells things as they were and corrects popular myths. But it's a bit short on the analytical side, especially on the business side of things. Reading it, one would get the impression that the economic turnaround was just a matter of Geoffrey Howe pulling the right levers, unemployment smashing the unions, and Nissan building a state-of-the-art factory. But surely that wasn't all there was to it.
Books are part entertainment. This has got it in spades. Not much more to say.
P.S. I recently learnt that Geoffrey Howe isn't Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel dim.
It is now a cliche that anytime Britain does something loopy for commentators to pop out and intone: 'is this imperial nostalgia?' Who Dares Wins suggests that it isn't quite that.
Britons can justly be said to be amnesiacs about their empire. That isn't the case for WW2, when--all together now--Britain stood alone. If WW2 was the apotheosis of British history, then the reversal at Suez was their nadir. Afterwards, the country drifted, seemingly barricaded on Decline Boulevard. The narrative spinners, at least, were only too keen to sell that impression.
Reich's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said:
A statesman...waits until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasps the hem of His garment.
All-action Maggie was the British statesman who grasped the garment of an age when Britons had enough of the old ways. She was the avatar of the populist nationalism that still dominates British politics and foreign policy. That Britons dare to win. That they stand, often alone, in the world against tyranny. That Europeans are 'namby-pambies' who can be handbagged into submission. All those are uniquely Thatcherite views. So next time the Britons make you scratch your head, blame Thatcher! RIP her.
While the departed PM looms large over the book, we are spared the tedium of nearly 800 pages of her frankly tiresome earnestness. Oh, where to start with the list of characters? Just know that it's got everything from James Bond and World Championship snooker to a little-known leftie called Jeremy Corbyn in between a tonne of popstars who mean nothing to me but were probably the future, once. I mean, who calls themselves Durant-Durant? In all, Britons can be proud of the mosaic drawn. Well, except for the football hooligans. But, then again, they solved that. So 1-1.
This is top-notch narrative history. It tells things as they were and corrects popular myths. But it's a bit short on the analytical side, especially on the business side of things. Reading it, one would get the impression that the economic turnaround was just a matter of Geoffrey Howe pulling the right levers, unemployment smashing the unions, and Nissan building a state-of-the-art factory. But surely that wasn't all there was to it.
Books are part entertainment. This has got it in spades. Not much more to say.
P.S. I recently learnt that Geoffrey Howe isn't Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel dim.
May 14, 2020
In public, Mrs Thatcher never betrayed the slightest hint of strain. But in private, every now and again, there were clues. A few weeks later, an admirer called Mr Fowler sent her a ‘beautiful blue cashmere rug’. Despite all the pressures, she found the time to scribble a letter of thanks for such a ‘very special gift’: Not only is it exquisite in itself, and it is, but it came as a wonderful surprise and at a difficult time just when I needed a little thoughtfulness and kindliness. And you provided it. This task, to which I have set my hand, is the most absorbing and fascinating in the world. But sometimes it is lonely as one struggles to take the right decision. At such times, it is marvellous to know that one has good friends, constantly urging us on and wishing us well. She was human, after all.
It would be impossible to write a book such as Dominic Sandbrook's Who Dares Wins:Britain 1979-1982 without devoting a sizeable chunk of the text to the woman dubbed The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, as well as those who were in her political sphere. A woman who, although pilloried for her part in dismantling the heavy industry of the UK, felt a heavy weight of responsibility upon her shoulders each day she spent in office. 'Pilloried' is no understatement; in many former industrial centres...basically, anywhere that isn't 'down south', she is roundly condemned for having been single-handedly responsible for utterly shattering working class communities. Shipbuilding, mining, steel, textiles and car-manufacturing among many others, were lost forever. But more significantly, areas within the towns and cities which they served were left as heartless wastelands of urban decay and deprivation. In such places, the mere inkling that somebody supports Thatchers viewpoints, or sees any good in the woman whatsoever, is to this day, still likely to attract a measure of emotionally charged aggression. Just how one single politician (aside from truly despotic dictators) can attract such animosity, on such a wide scale, has always intrigued me. It was with exactly this sense of intrigue that I approached Sandbrook's fifth instalment of a series, which charts the history of postwar Great Britain.
Make no bones about it; this book is not easy to get into. The previous offering in this series Seasons In The Sun conveys the perfect tone. In spite of it's length, it has the perfect balance between educational tome and light-hearted jog through the latter years of the 1970's. But I've always had conflicted feelings on Sandbrook's work. The first couple of instalments were only slightly more pleasing than having a kerosene-soaked rag, that has just been set alight, forced down your gullet. They were painful to read, Sandbrook seemingly happy to indulge his (apparent) passion for macroeconomics, whilst at the same time, seemingly forgetting to clarify to those of us who are wholly ignorant of that field, just what the fuck he is actually talking about. This made even the most banal pursuit, such as watching a car bumper slowly rusting away, seem like a truly adrenalin-fuelled prospect. In Who Dares Wins Sandbrook strays into this territory once again. Whilst interest rates, inflation, the strength of the pound and the money supply all form the central backbone of any history of a modern nation, it it the authors job to make it even slightly more palatable than might be the case were you to learn it in a degree course, via textbooks and eccentric, elbow-patch wearing lecturers. In this Sandbrook fails. I seriously considered whether Sandbrook was trying to ensure that the reader relive the years 1979-1982, in a bizarre simulation that plays out in real time.
Allied to this was the fact that it often feels as though Sandbrook conducts some bastardised, literary equivalent of trepanning, cutting a section of his skull away and pouring his brains onto the page with reckless abandon, for us to see in all their glory. There is simply no structure here, no narrative thread. One moment, Sandbrook can be writing of the New Romantic movement in popular music, engendered in such groups as Spandau Ballet and Ultravox. Then, it's back to bloody interest rates, inflation and supply-side economics, with an almost fanatical zeal. Furthermore, Sandbrook can choose some truly dull topics. His scattergun approach to historical writing ('I've narrowed the list of topics to be covered to five hundred. Someone's bound to like one of them'), often makes it feel that it would be great if he would get to the point. Then, like a channel swimmer halfway on their journey, the realisation dawns that it is too late to turn back. And that in fact, there is no point. Occasionally, there is the faint glimmer of an actual viewpoint he might hold on something, then that chapter ends and as the page is turned to start the next lengthy section, the soul-crushing realisation dawns on me. It's about bloody interest rates. At one point there is a lengthy ramble about the various menu's one might find in eateries of the early eighties. That was riveting.
So, once you come to terms with the fact that Sandbrook's style is to cover as many topics as possible, with an average of maybe one in five being actually engaging, there is little choice other than to plough on to the bitter end. Occasionally, there is the chance of stumbling across something that holds your interest. The main highlights are the authors humanising approach to Thatcher. After reading this, I don't think I'll ever see her as quite the fire-breathing old bitch that many seem to believe she was. She was more than that. A woman who made some incredibly tough decisions as PM, who seemed somewhat disengaged from the person on the street whilst also being able to express heartfelt emotion now and again. Somebody who led the country through some of it's toughest times in a generation and ultimately, someone with principles.
I couldn't recommend this. It's too long, too rambling and in many sections, simply too dull. There is a lot of credit due to Sandbrook for the extensive research he obviously conducts in producing these works. But to what end? That was the question that was front and foremost in my mind with this book. And then, after over 800 pages, the end finally came.
It would be impossible to write a book such as Dominic Sandbrook's Who Dares Wins:Britain 1979-1982 without devoting a sizeable chunk of the text to the woman dubbed The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, as well as those who were in her political sphere. A woman who, although pilloried for her part in dismantling the heavy industry of the UK, felt a heavy weight of responsibility upon her shoulders each day she spent in office. 'Pilloried' is no understatement; in many former industrial centres...basically, anywhere that isn't 'down south', she is roundly condemned for having been single-handedly responsible for utterly shattering working class communities. Shipbuilding, mining, steel, textiles and car-manufacturing among many others, were lost forever. But more significantly, areas within the towns and cities which they served were left as heartless wastelands of urban decay and deprivation. In such places, the mere inkling that somebody supports Thatchers viewpoints, or sees any good in the woman whatsoever, is to this day, still likely to attract a measure of emotionally charged aggression. Just how one single politician (aside from truly despotic dictators) can attract such animosity, on such a wide scale, has always intrigued me. It was with exactly this sense of intrigue that I approached Sandbrook's fifth instalment of a series, which charts the history of postwar Great Britain.
Make no bones about it; this book is not easy to get into. The previous offering in this series Seasons In The Sun conveys the perfect tone. In spite of it's length, it has the perfect balance between educational tome and light-hearted jog through the latter years of the 1970's. But I've always had conflicted feelings on Sandbrook's work. The first couple of instalments were only slightly more pleasing than having a kerosene-soaked rag, that has just been set alight, forced down your gullet. They were painful to read, Sandbrook seemingly happy to indulge his (apparent) passion for macroeconomics, whilst at the same time, seemingly forgetting to clarify to those of us who are wholly ignorant of that field, just what the fuck he is actually talking about. This made even the most banal pursuit, such as watching a car bumper slowly rusting away, seem like a truly adrenalin-fuelled prospect. In Who Dares Wins Sandbrook strays into this territory once again. Whilst interest rates, inflation, the strength of the pound and the money supply all form the central backbone of any history of a modern nation, it it the authors job to make it even slightly more palatable than might be the case were you to learn it in a degree course, via textbooks and eccentric, elbow-patch wearing lecturers. In this Sandbrook fails. I seriously considered whether Sandbrook was trying to ensure that the reader relive the years 1979-1982, in a bizarre simulation that plays out in real time.
Allied to this was the fact that it often feels as though Sandbrook conducts some bastardised, literary equivalent of trepanning, cutting a section of his skull away and pouring his brains onto the page with reckless abandon, for us to see in all their glory. There is simply no structure here, no narrative thread. One moment, Sandbrook can be writing of the New Romantic movement in popular music, engendered in such groups as Spandau Ballet and Ultravox. Then, it's back to bloody interest rates, inflation and supply-side economics, with an almost fanatical zeal. Furthermore, Sandbrook can choose some truly dull topics. His scattergun approach to historical writing ('I've narrowed the list of topics to be covered to five hundred. Someone's bound to like one of them'), often makes it feel that it would be great if he would get to the point. Then, like a channel swimmer halfway on their journey, the realisation dawns that it is too late to turn back. And that in fact, there is no point. Occasionally, there is the faint glimmer of an actual viewpoint he might hold on something, then that chapter ends and as the page is turned to start the next lengthy section, the soul-crushing realisation dawns on me. It's about bloody interest rates. At one point there is a lengthy ramble about the various menu's one might find in eateries of the early eighties. That was riveting.
So, once you come to terms with the fact that Sandbrook's style is to cover as many topics as possible, with an average of maybe one in five being actually engaging, there is little choice other than to plough on to the bitter end. Occasionally, there is the chance of stumbling across something that holds your interest. The main highlights are the authors humanising approach to Thatcher. After reading this, I don't think I'll ever see her as quite the fire-breathing old bitch that many seem to believe she was. She was more than that. A woman who made some incredibly tough decisions as PM, who seemed somewhat disengaged from the person on the street whilst also being able to express heartfelt emotion now and again. Somebody who led the country through some of it's toughest times in a generation and ultimately, someone with principles.
I couldn't recommend this. It's too long, too rambling and in many sections, simply too dull. There is a lot of credit due to Sandbrook for the extensive research he obviously conducts in producing these works. But to what end? That was the question that was front and foremost in my mind with this book. And then, after over 800 pages, the end finally came.
July 24, 2024
Kaleidoscope account of a turbulent time in British culture and politics, incisive and witty and fairly even-handed. It's well researched and deftly weaves a huge amount of information into a cohesive whole. Inevitably there are some omissions (I thought he would cover the grim shadow of Peter Sutcliffe, for example), but overall he covers a time I remember relatively well, superbly
April 12, 2023
The book focuses on the history of early 1980s Britain. It is a comprehensive overview of the period, culminating with the Falklands War.
Postwar Britain suffered a long period of decline as they recovered from that tremendous struggle. This period is really the beginning of the turn around. I remember those years well, but this book does a great job of covering it from a British perspective. I don’t think the author is a “Thatcherite” but he covers her fairly.
Very much enjoyed the audiobook, read by the author, one of my favourite podcasters.
Postwar Britain suffered a long period of decline as they recovered from that tremendous struggle. This period is really the beginning of the turn around. I remember those years well, but this book does a great job of covering it from a British perspective. I don’t think the author is a “Thatcherite” but he covers her fairly.
Very much enjoyed the audiobook, read by the author, one of my favourite podcasters.
Read
August 12, 2024If I'm ever lucky enough to be at a table quiz on everything that happened in the UK from 1979 to 1982, I will do very well in it.
April 7, 2022
Thatcherism: gloria retrouvé, or in transit?
Who Dares Wins, British historian Dominic Sandbrook's 2019 history of the first three years of the Thatcher government (1979-1982), provides an extensive and fascinating account of Britain's transformation from the ruinous economic decline of the 1970s ( the 'sick man of Europe') to a society sufficiently recharged by victory in the Falklands War of summer 1982 to slough off the dead skin of excessive post-war regulation and cultural detritus, and advance revitalized towards renewed economic and cultural leadership by the 1990s.
A key question is: was the change engineered by Thatcher, or did she ride a wave of inevitable economic and social progress, contributing primarily her trademark grit and determination (hence the moniker 'the Iron Lady', who is 'not for turning' even when further toleration of the social burden of change seems inhumane to many).
Part of the answer lies in the structure of Sandbrook's magnum opus (800+ pages of detailed research, analysis and commentary, part of his ongoing series of books on Britain's post-war history, soon to be augmented with a history of the post 1982 years of Thatcher's government).
The book contains substantial social history, informed by close reading of the major newspapers of the period and the detail of people's experiences of the times as recorded in the Mass Observation Project. Sandbrook also seems to have read the complete trove of Thatcher documents available in the online Thatcher Archive.
The two epigraphs heading the book suggest who the real actors of history may be: the first is Fielding's remark in Tom Jones, that 'many little circumstances are omitted by injudicious historians ... the great wheels are set in motion by those which are very minute'; the second is Tolstoy's comment in War and Peace that 'most of the people paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided by their private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at that period were most useful.'
Much of the book therefore documents the lives of ordinary people, with the substantial changes they underwent being less a backdrop for a Thatcher revolution, and more a palimpsest which supported and justified the substantial rewriting of governance wrought by Thatcher's monetarist policies. The social changes were substantial, driven partly by technological innovation, greater prosperity for the middle classes, and a stronger sense of individualism.
The major changes include: the emergence of home computers, which triggered a stronger sense of personal control; the rise of a new popular culture which embraced the so-called New Romanticism of music bands such as Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Soft Cell et alia; the diminishing of the traditional mass movement politics of the left by the more individualist 'personal is political' agenda of feminism, gay rights, etc.; the diversification of popular sporting interests into intimate television friendly spectacles such as snooker; and the penetration of fast food franchises such as MacDonalds, the packaged sandwich, and a broader range of retailed prepared foods generally, each of which loosened ties to the traditional family meal, and reflected greater mobility for those participating in more adaptable and efficient work opportunities.
The period of transition was notable also for major disruptive reactions driven by the decimation of the traditional working class by industrial transformation. These changes were ephemeral rather than durable, albeit highly significant for many at the time. They included substantial protest marches by the newly unemployed, increasing racial tensions and riots in the inner cities, the reinvigoration of the CND anti nuclear campaigns, and Northern Ireland hunger strikes and related terrorist bombings.
The transformation of Britain under these social developments seems driven more by structural change than a direct result of the election of Margaret Thatcher. Sandbrook notes that many changes superficially attributed to the Thatcher years were in fact well underway when Thatcher was first elected in 1979. This is certainly true of the Thatcher economic agenda.
Thatcherism is often characterised as a substantial break with the economic policies of the post-war years. Both sides of politics in those years managed the bedding down of the welfare state, the development of nationalised industries, the use of prices and incomes policies to control inflation, pursuit of full employment, and direct government control of the currency.
Thatcherism may have seemed at the time to be a reaction to the terminal decline of Keynesian policies to manage aggregate demand, and the standard response to economic crises by activating anti-cyclic policies, ie, stimulating demand and employment with programs financed by government borrowing when recession threatened and government receipts declined.
But the programs given relatively free rein under Thatcher were part of a broader international shift to deregulation and monetarism that preceded the 1979 election in the UK. Fault lines were apparent in the post war Keynesian consensus by the mid 70s, especially after the OPEC countries raised oil prices, which increased inflation outside the direct control of national government.
This and related global developments led many to think that the post war consensus that governments could control their economies by simply switching taxation and spending policies was no longer effective or appropriate. Central planning was failing dismally in the eastern bloc communist countries, and aggregate, centralised government of economies in the democracies under the Keynesian model was also failing dramatically.
Deregulation to allow markets to react quickly and efficiently to changing circumstances seemed to many to be a more effective response to new circumstances, and had the added advantage of providing stronger incentives for improving productivity, and overall wealth (although a less direct role for government would undoubtedly reduce opportunities for the redistribution of wealth and income, which in themselves had costs that previously had not been fully recognised).
Change was thus well afoot before Thatcher's government came to office. In Britain, the Sterling Crisis of 1976, when the pound was tanking against the US dollar, forced the then Callaghan government to request funding from the International Monetary Fund, which in turn imposed non-Keynesian conditions on the loan that included cutting government spending and raising interest rates (the crisis was caused in part by high levels of government borrowing, budget deficits, and an increasing current account deficit as local industries became more uncompetitive).
Political opposition in the UK to cuts in government expenditure, and continuing inflation, led to the 1978/79 Winter of Discontent, with substantial strikes and excessive pay rises to contain industrial unrest.
It was obvious national policy needed a rethink. Against this background, Thatcher won government with a monetarist program to reverse Britain's decline.
The new program was radical by the conventions of the 1970s: control inflation by constraining the growth of the money supply with higher interest rates, higher income and consumption taxes, and reduced government spending. Counter-cyclical, large scale government spending programs to offset recession were disregarded as both useless and counter productive.
Thatcher was also to develop and apply a rigorous program of microeconomic reform throughout the 1980s, to induce greater productivity and provide more opportunities for wealth creation. The policies included privatising government monopolies and government owned industries, deregulating product markets to allow competition to increase incentives for efficiency, reducing the power of the trades unions to disrupt the economy, and improving the level of home ownership (by allowing tenants to buy council housing).
Britain was not alone in this reversal of the post-war Keynesian program. Similar programs were established in most Western democracies, where needed, and nations that were reluctant to countenance reforms (eg, France) continued with economies that remained relatively scelerotic. In my own country, Australia, a Labor government successfully implemented rigorous reforms in the 1980s to increase competition, reduce regulation, and remove excess currency controls.
The Thatcher policies were not immediately beneficial. The 1981 government budget reduced spending and increased taxes, at a time when the recession caused by the various crises of the late 1970s was at its worst. Reduced support for uncompetitive manufacturing industries increased unemployment substantially.
The rise in interest rates elevated the pound, making export industries less competitive. Manufacturing generally contracted by 25 per cent relative to the 1970s, and GDP by 2 per cent in 1981. Inflation worsened in the short term, and strict control of the money supply eventually had to be abandoned as too simplistic a measure.
The anti-inflation policies did, however, generate results over time: rates fell from a high of 22 per cent to under 10 per cent, albeit at considerable social cost, which was borne largely by those working in the traditional industries where government financial support was reduced or withdrawn.
The Thatcher program thus was largely in the spirit of the times, and had much in common with policies being implemented in other countries. These policies seem predominantly to be a response to the substantial decline of post war economic orthodoxies made redundant by increased globalization and stronger international competition.
The emergence of a stronger Britain was signalled most spectacularly by Thatcher's reaction to the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands in early 1982. Sandbrook demonstrates clearly that Thatcher's determination to regain the Islands (against considerable opposition from her colleagues, and the Reagan administration in the US) symbolized the resurgence of a revitalized Britain.
Thatcher was fortunate that the Argentine military junta was inept, but, nevertheless, her fortitude and Britain's superior military strength ensured a victory at a time when new policies for national economic progress were beginning to demonstrate that they were right for the times.
The Falklands victory also demonstrates the importance of a single authoritative figure focused on core beliefs and principles in times of crisis. The victory was largely hers (as was recognised at the time by many who would have pinned responsibility for a loss solely on her).
Sandbrook bookends Who Dares Wins with the successful shock troop assault by the Special Air Services (SAS) to recover a terrorist occupied Iranian embassy in London in late April 1980 and the Falklands War (the title is the SAS motto).
Both events suggest that Britain was not in irreversible decline at the end of the 1970s, and that its national self respect, battered by economic decline and policy paralysis, was reinvigorated by these two highly public examples of competence and leadership.
Thatcher's resolution and determination suggests she was the right woman for the times. She was not solely responsible for Britain riding out the storm of the end of the post war Keynesian economic model, but she provided the leadership and assurance that ensured success was achieved relatively quickly (within a decade) and effectively. Future governments would not meddle with the key changes in national economic policy delivered by the Thatcher government.
It is worth noting that Who Dares Wins won several book of year awards when published, and that its composition and style are thoroughly engaging, as well as often witty and enlightening. I enjoyed particularly Sandbrook's characterisation of the Argentine military junta as comprising '... senior officers who had barely fired a shot ... They were particularly good at launching coups, wearing sunglasses, and murdering dissidents ... but their only experience of combat had been to apply electrodes to the genitals of left wing poets.'
As an aside, it is remarkable to read in Who Dares Wins of the intense socialism fostered by the trades union activists of the period. It might beggar belief that people could countenance such economically fruitless ideas when in their own time the socialism enforced in Eastern Europe was demonstrating convincingly that central planning and despotic government results inevitably in relatively miserable living standards. It seems that socialist ideas are virulent and repeatedly find receptive hosts.
In our own time, after 20 years of rampaging political correctness, the popularity of identity politics, the widespread acceptance in academia and corporations of, among other things, the main tenets of Marxist-inspired Critical Theory, and the concomitant rejection by many of traditional rationalism and the Enlightenment principles, and even elementary biology, the ongoing fascination for neo-Marxist theories seems part of a longer tradition of embracing religious revolts against the existing order (even when existing practices seem well tested and valuable).
Even worse, since the publication of Who Dares Wins, many democratically elected governments felt free to manage the outbreak of a new virus (released globally by incompetence within the Chinese autocracy) by forcibly locking down their citizenry, when evidence for the merit of such simplistic and punitive policies was absent.
The relative decline of the democracies, and the rabid willingness of the autocracies to fill the breach in global dominance, seems to be developing into an Orwellian nightmare.
Perhaps it is time for another Thatcher to rescue nations from anti-democratic actions, put the case for revitalising the democracies, and to reinstate true liberalism. Who dares wins.
Who Dares Wins, British historian Dominic Sandbrook's 2019 history of the first three years of the Thatcher government (1979-1982), provides an extensive and fascinating account of Britain's transformation from the ruinous economic decline of the 1970s ( the 'sick man of Europe') to a society sufficiently recharged by victory in the Falklands War of summer 1982 to slough off the dead skin of excessive post-war regulation and cultural detritus, and advance revitalized towards renewed economic and cultural leadership by the 1990s.
A key question is: was the change engineered by Thatcher, or did she ride a wave of inevitable economic and social progress, contributing primarily her trademark grit and determination (hence the moniker 'the Iron Lady', who is 'not for turning' even when further toleration of the social burden of change seems inhumane to many).
Part of the answer lies in the structure of Sandbrook's magnum opus (800+ pages of detailed research, analysis and commentary, part of his ongoing series of books on Britain's post-war history, soon to be augmented with a history of the post 1982 years of Thatcher's government).
The book contains substantial social history, informed by close reading of the major newspapers of the period and the detail of people's experiences of the times as recorded in the Mass Observation Project. Sandbrook also seems to have read the complete trove of Thatcher documents available in the online Thatcher Archive.
The two epigraphs heading the book suggest who the real actors of history may be: the first is Fielding's remark in Tom Jones, that 'many little circumstances are omitted by injudicious historians ... the great wheels are set in motion by those which are very minute'; the second is Tolstoy's comment in War and Peace that 'most of the people paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided by their private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at that period were most useful.'
Much of the book therefore documents the lives of ordinary people, with the substantial changes they underwent being less a backdrop for a Thatcher revolution, and more a palimpsest which supported and justified the substantial rewriting of governance wrought by Thatcher's monetarist policies. The social changes were substantial, driven partly by technological innovation, greater prosperity for the middle classes, and a stronger sense of individualism.
The major changes include: the emergence of home computers, which triggered a stronger sense of personal control; the rise of a new popular culture which embraced the so-called New Romanticism of music bands such as Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Soft Cell et alia; the diminishing of the traditional mass movement politics of the left by the more individualist 'personal is political' agenda of feminism, gay rights, etc.; the diversification of popular sporting interests into intimate television friendly spectacles such as snooker; and the penetration of fast food franchises such as MacDonalds, the packaged sandwich, and a broader range of retailed prepared foods generally, each of which loosened ties to the traditional family meal, and reflected greater mobility for those participating in more adaptable and efficient work opportunities.
The period of transition was notable also for major disruptive reactions driven by the decimation of the traditional working class by industrial transformation. These changes were ephemeral rather than durable, albeit highly significant for many at the time. They included substantial protest marches by the newly unemployed, increasing racial tensions and riots in the inner cities, the reinvigoration of the CND anti nuclear campaigns, and Northern Ireland hunger strikes and related terrorist bombings.
The transformation of Britain under these social developments seems driven more by structural change than a direct result of the election of Margaret Thatcher. Sandbrook notes that many changes superficially attributed to the Thatcher years were in fact well underway when Thatcher was first elected in 1979. This is certainly true of the Thatcher economic agenda.
Thatcherism is often characterised as a substantial break with the economic policies of the post-war years. Both sides of politics in those years managed the bedding down of the welfare state, the development of nationalised industries, the use of prices and incomes policies to control inflation, pursuit of full employment, and direct government control of the currency.
Thatcherism may have seemed at the time to be a reaction to the terminal decline of Keynesian policies to manage aggregate demand, and the standard response to economic crises by activating anti-cyclic policies, ie, stimulating demand and employment with programs financed by government borrowing when recession threatened and government receipts declined.
But the programs given relatively free rein under Thatcher were part of a broader international shift to deregulation and monetarism that preceded the 1979 election in the UK. Fault lines were apparent in the post war Keynesian consensus by the mid 70s, especially after the OPEC countries raised oil prices, which increased inflation outside the direct control of national government.
This and related global developments led many to think that the post war consensus that governments could control their economies by simply switching taxation and spending policies was no longer effective or appropriate. Central planning was failing dismally in the eastern bloc communist countries, and aggregate, centralised government of economies in the democracies under the Keynesian model was also failing dramatically.
Deregulation to allow markets to react quickly and efficiently to changing circumstances seemed to many to be a more effective response to new circumstances, and had the added advantage of providing stronger incentives for improving productivity, and overall wealth (although a less direct role for government would undoubtedly reduce opportunities for the redistribution of wealth and income, which in themselves had costs that previously had not been fully recognised).
Change was thus well afoot before Thatcher's government came to office. In Britain, the Sterling Crisis of 1976, when the pound was tanking against the US dollar, forced the then Callaghan government to request funding from the International Monetary Fund, which in turn imposed non-Keynesian conditions on the loan that included cutting government spending and raising interest rates (the crisis was caused in part by high levels of government borrowing, budget deficits, and an increasing current account deficit as local industries became more uncompetitive).
Political opposition in the UK to cuts in government expenditure, and continuing inflation, led to the 1978/79 Winter of Discontent, with substantial strikes and excessive pay rises to contain industrial unrest.
It was obvious national policy needed a rethink. Against this background, Thatcher won government with a monetarist program to reverse Britain's decline.
The new program was radical by the conventions of the 1970s: control inflation by constraining the growth of the money supply with higher interest rates, higher income and consumption taxes, and reduced government spending. Counter-cyclical, large scale government spending programs to offset recession were disregarded as both useless and counter productive.
Thatcher was also to develop and apply a rigorous program of microeconomic reform throughout the 1980s, to induce greater productivity and provide more opportunities for wealth creation. The policies included privatising government monopolies and government owned industries, deregulating product markets to allow competition to increase incentives for efficiency, reducing the power of the trades unions to disrupt the economy, and improving the level of home ownership (by allowing tenants to buy council housing).
Britain was not alone in this reversal of the post-war Keynesian program. Similar programs were established in most Western democracies, where needed, and nations that were reluctant to countenance reforms (eg, France) continued with economies that remained relatively scelerotic. In my own country, Australia, a Labor government successfully implemented rigorous reforms in the 1980s to increase competition, reduce regulation, and remove excess currency controls.
The Thatcher policies were not immediately beneficial. The 1981 government budget reduced spending and increased taxes, at a time when the recession caused by the various crises of the late 1970s was at its worst. Reduced support for uncompetitive manufacturing industries increased unemployment substantially.
The rise in interest rates elevated the pound, making export industries less competitive. Manufacturing generally contracted by 25 per cent relative to the 1970s, and GDP by 2 per cent in 1981. Inflation worsened in the short term, and strict control of the money supply eventually had to be abandoned as too simplistic a measure.
The anti-inflation policies did, however, generate results over time: rates fell from a high of 22 per cent to under 10 per cent, albeit at considerable social cost, which was borne largely by those working in the traditional industries where government financial support was reduced or withdrawn.
The Thatcher program thus was largely in the spirit of the times, and had much in common with policies being implemented in other countries. These policies seem predominantly to be a response to the substantial decline of post war economic orthodoxies made redundant by increased globalization and stronger international competition.
The emergence of a stronger Britain was signalled most spectacularly by Thatcher's reaction to the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands in early 1982. Sandbrook demonstrates clearly that Thatcher's determination to regain the Islands (against considerable opposition from her colleagues, and the Reagan administration in the US) symbolized the resurgence of a revitalized Britain.
Thatcher was fortunate that the Argentine military junta was inept, but, nevertheless, her fortitude and Britain's superior military strength ensured a victory at a time when new policies for national economic progress were beginning to demonstrate that they were right for the times.
The Falklands victory also demonstrates the importance of a single authoritative figure focused on core beliefs and principles in times of crisis. The victory was largely hers (as was recognised at the time by many who would have pinned responsibility for a loss solely on her).
Sandbrook bookends Who Dares Wins with the successful shock troop assault by the Special Air Services (SAS) to recover a terrorist occupied Iranian embassy in London in late April 1980 and the Falklands War (the title is the SAS motto).
Both events suggest that Britain was not in irreversible decline at the end of the 1970s, and that its national self respect, battered by economic decline and policy paralysis, was reinvigorated by these two highly public examples of competence and leadership.
Thatcher's resolution and determination suggests she was the right woman for the times. She was not solely responsible for Britain riding out the storm of the end of the post war Keynesian economic model, but she provided the leadership and assurance that ensured success was achieved relatively quickly (within a decade) and effectively. Future governments would not meddle with the key changes in national economic policy delivered by the Thatcher government.
It is worth noting that Who Dares Wins won several book of year awards when published, and that its composition and style are thoroughly engaging, as well as often witty and enlightening. I enjoyed particularly Sandbrook's characterisation of the Argentine military junta as comprising '... senior officers who had barely fired a shot ... They were particularly good at launching coups, wearing sunglasses, and murdering dissidents ... but their only experience of combat had been to apply electrodes to the genitals of left wing poets.'
As an aside, it is remarkable to read in Who Dares Wins of the intense socialism fostered by the trades union activists of the period. It might beggar belief that people could countenance such economically fruitless ideas when in their own time the socialism enforced in Eastern Europe was demonstrating convincingly that central planning and despotic government results inevitably in relatively miserable living standards. It seems that socialist ideas are virulent and repeatedly find receptive hosts.
In our own time, after 20 years of rampaging political correctness, the popularity of identity politics, the widespread acceptance in academia and corporations of, among other things, the main tenets of Marxist-inspired Critical Theory, and the concomitant rejection by many of traditional rationalism and the Enlightenment principles, and even elementary biology, the ongoing fascination for neo-Marxist theories seems part of a longer tradition of embracing religious revolts against the existing order (even when existing practices seem well tested and valuable).
Even worse, since the publication of Who Dares Wins, many democratically elected governments felt free to manage the outbreak of a new virus (released globally by incompetence within the Chinese autocracy) by forcibly locking down their citizenry, when evidence for the merit of such simplistic and punitive policies was absent.
The relative decline of the democracies, and the rabid willingness of the autocracies to fill the breach in global dominance, seems to be developing into an Orwellian nightmare.
Perhaps it is time for another Thatcher to rescue nations from anti-democratic actions, put the case for revitalising the democracies, and to reinstate true liberalism. Who dares wins.
December 27, 2019
The book provides a very detailed account of the first three years of Mrs Thatcher’s Government from the election to the Falkland war. The author surveys politics, culture and societies in general. It’s well written and, despite being detailed, I was not overwhelmed by the account. He casts a wry eye over matters and places what was popularly seen in context. As well as the struggles within the government between wets and dries, he analyses the near self destruction of Labour and the rise of the SDP. It’s an essential read.
December 14, 2021
This has taken me 2 years to read! It's the 6th in a history of post-war UK. I found this volume harder-going, mainly due to the meandering & repetitive nature of many of its chapters. A tighter edit would have made it as readable as its 5 predecessors in the series.
March 15, 2020
So Dominic Sandbrook's multi-volume opus reaches the 1980s, and with the beginning of the Thatcher era, he enters a period where history itself becomes divisive. So many of the current crop of left-wing journalists and politicians found their voices as being more anti-Thatcher than pro anything else that Sandbrook finds himself, before the narrative even starts, having to justify his very terms of reference. How does one refer to the first female prime minister in British history? Certainly not as Margaret or Mrs T, but the usual shorthand of referring simply by surname - as with everyone from Walpole to Callaghan - is so politically charged, he feels it necessary to step away from the convention and justify his position in so doing. It is safe to say that many hardliners will bristle even at that.
Those same hardliners will have even more difficulty with what is to follow. Because what Sandbrook goes on to demonstrate is that much of what is now ascribed to Margaret Thatcher was either already in train before she became its public face (council house sales) or was less under her control than the left-leaning revisionists would have us believe (industrial decline). For those on the right who worship her memory, meanwhile, it is telling that Thatcher was - at least in these early years - less effective than they would like to believe.
Events, as ever, were as much a product of outside forces - the manner in which North Sea oil was actually a problem for our economy more than a bonanza that was squandered is particularly revealing - and the new government was struggling to change the direction of our economy in the face of serious turbulence. Sandbrook frequently asks whether things could have been different, and whilst sometimes in hindsight it seems they could (if only slightly), it is clear that without that hindsight, such outcomes were unlikely in the extreme.
This time more than previously, politics doesn't only dominate the narrative, it bleeds into broader culture, with the unashamed capitalism of the New Romantics and sportsmen contrasting sharply with the social commentary of two-tone. As ever, Sandbrook approaches his subject with a fair degree of wit: treating Not the Nine O'Clock News' New Romantic parody "Nice Video, Shame About the Song" as a serious and underrated example of the genre is a particular highlight.
The tail end of the book is consumed largely by the Falklands conflict, Sandbrook deflating the usual narrative of a jingoist prime minister fighting a war that nobody bar the Sun supported and showing how not only was the idea of ceding sovereignty of the islands in the air before the war, it was actually the resistance of the Argentine government which prevented it from happening. The broader story, however, reveals a conflict brewing between rival media providers and the fractures within the Labour Party, foreshadowing issues that have become relevant again only recently.
In fact, the extended period this volume has taken to get to market has done much to increase its relevance to the modern reader. With the rise and fall of the SDP, the power struggle between the wings of the Labour party, and the allegations of anti-British bias at the BBC, it feels like little has changed in the nearly forty years since the events the book covers. It's a fascinating view of a world of snooker on the telly and ZX Spectrums in friends' houses, a world vaguely familiar to those of us who were still very young at the time. For those looking to learn the lessons of the age, however, I suspect you're probably going to have to wait for subsequent volumes. Hopefully we won't have to wait quite as long this time.
Those same hardliners will have even more difficulty with what is to follow. Because what Sandbrook goes on to demonstrate is that much of what is now ascribed to Margaret Thatcher was either already in train before she became its public face (council house sales) or was less under her control than the left-leaning revisionists would have us believe (industrial decline). For those on the right who worship her memory, meanwhile, it is telling that Thatcher was - at least in these early years - less effective than they would like to believe.
Events, as ever, were as much a product of outside forces - the manner in which North Sea oil was actually a problem for our economy more than a bonanza that was squandered is particularly revealing - and the new government was struggling to change the direction of our economy in the face of serious turbulence. Sandbrook frequently asks whether things could have been different, and whilst sometimes in hindsight it seems they could (if only slightly), it is clear that without that hindsight, such outcomes were unlikely in the extreme.
This time more than previously, politics doesn't only dominate the narrative, it bleeds into broader culture, with the unashamed capitalism of the New Romantics and sportsmen contrasting sharply with the social commentary of two-tone. As ever, Sandbrook approaches his subject with a fair degree of wit: treating Not the Nine O'Clock News' New Romantic parody "Nice Video, Shame About the Song" as a serious and underrated example of the genre is a particular highlight.
The tail end of the book is consumed largely by the Falklands conflict, Sandbrook deflating the usual narrative of a jingoist prime minister fighting a war that nobody bar the Sun supported and showing how not only was the idea of ceding sovereignty of the islands in the air before the war, it was actually the resistance of the Argentine government which prevented it from happening. The broader story, however, reveals a conflict brewing between rival media providers and the fractures within the Labour Party, foreshadowing issues that have become relevant again only recently.
In fact, the extended period this volume has taken to get to market has done much to increase its relevance to the modern reader. With the rise and fall of the SDP, the power struggle between the wings of the Labour party, and the allegations of anti-British bias at the BBC, it feels like little has changed in the nearly forty years since the events the book covers. It's a fascinating view of a world of snooker on the telly and ZX Spectrums in friends' houses, a world vaguely familiar to those of us who were still very young at the time. For those looking to learn the lessons of the age, however, I suspect you're probably going to have to wait for subsequent volumes. Hopefully we won't have to wait quite as long this time.
March 15, 2021
Having read all Sandbrooks previous volumes in this series I have to say I was eagerly awaiting reading this but boy is it both a physically big book to hold and tricky to read for long stretches. Sandbrook has written a lengthy and detailed book on a three year period when some writers could cover the whole decade in less pages. Still he continues to use the same trademark style of a busy narrative interspersed with seemingly standalone chapters on popular culture. He also does the usual trick of writing several pages about something and then dropping in a name or event you weren’t expecting. Still the length of the book allows more obscure anecdotes and the inclusion of ordinary people’s experiences which make it an imposing historical secondary source for future scholars. Much material was familiar but he tells the story well almost like a geeky fan and his thesis of aspiration driving ordinary people links with the arrival of Thatcher. Sandbrook is great at pen portraits of his subjects and always provides their social background as context for their actions. I fail to mention examples because there are so many but he uses a ready wit and a chatty entertaining style to colour his story. So far so Sandbrook. He does though go out of his way to provide mitigation for the worst excesses of Thatcher and her ism. Time and time he asks supposedly rhetorically- was she really to blame? ( for riots or unemployment or poverty or a lack of empathy) and time and time again he says there is a lot of evidence on the negative side against her. Then he backtracks and usually claims conditions that proceeded her ( it started under Callaghan; this had already been happening ) so that Thatcher has been unfairly demonised for the sins of others despite her character faults ( which are also mitigated by quotes from personal letters to curious schoolboys ) . This grated as did his inability to resist jibes about Corbyn leftism now as an echo of Benn or Red Robbo who he also doesn’t like.
So whilst none of this is a surprise it does grate as much of the narrative covers Thatchers stuttering first few years in power. He ends with interesting words about the Falklands war- it was a myth this provided her with an election bounce because polls had already been rising before the war ( Apparently) it occurred to me that less pages engineering mitigation for Thatcher would have made it a shorter more digestible book - Sandbrook might have followed a new rule in his research and writing - Who Dares.....Thins ( out the needless narrative mitigation thread). I understand he thinks he has a new take on a softer more human but still ideologically correct Thatcher. I think there are other nuanced ways of telling the story. We await the next volume but I may need to do weight training first- like the Thatcher years themselves this book became an endurance test. It is however lazy publishing not to include a bibliography in such an already expensive book. There are small print notes at the back but they are hard to navigate- naughty penguin books.. One book he does mention is Alwyn Turners Rejoice Rejoice which does the whole decade in one volume and is a lighter bet to read in hardback without spraining your wrist!!
So whilst none of this is a surprise it does grate as much of the narrative covers Thatchers stuttering first few years in power. He ends with interesting words about the Falklands war- it was a myth this provided her with an election bounce because polls had already been rising before the war ( Apparently) it occurred to me that less pages engineering mitigation for Thatcher would have made it a shorter more digestible book - Sandbrook might have followed a new rule in his research and writing - Who Dares.....Thins ( out the needless narrative mitigation thread). I understand he thinks he has a new take on a softer more human but still ideologically correct Thatcher. I think there are other nuanced ways of telling the story. We await the next volume but I may need to do weight training first- like the Thatcher years themselves this book became an endurance test. It is however lazy publishing not to include a bibliography in such an already expensive book. There are small print notes at the back but they are hard to navigate- naughty penguin books.. One book he does mention is Alwyn Turners Rejoice Rejoice which does the whole decade in one volume and is a lighter bet to read in hardback without spraining your wrist!!
June 27, 2020
Sandbrook’s Who Dares Wins is the story of just three years in the history of Britain, 1979 to 1982. It begins with the Winter of Discontent and Jim Callahan, who seems to have been a very decent and competent man who just happened to preside over his country’s unraveling. The story picks up in May 1980, when the SAS (whose motto gives the book its name) retook the Iranian embassy in Kensington from armed dissidents and climaxes during the Falklands War (April-June 1982), when Mrs Thatcher’s grit, determination and luck saw her through the most important conflict the country faced since Korea. Mrs Thatcher towers over the rest of the cast. Sandbrook shows both her great powers and limitations. He doesn’t diminish her responsibility for the 1980-1981 recession but he shows there were limited options at the time and no other party had a better economic policy than the Conservatives. She and her bloody minded chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe saw inflation off and dismantled the power of the unions that, along with mediocre management, had paralyzed the UK economy for over a decade. The author shows that, contrary to what some believe Mrs Thatcher was not in her way out by early 1982 when she was rescued by General Galtieri’s invasion of the Falklands. Rather, economic recovery had been evident in the prior Christmas and her electoral position would have been very strong in an election. Rather, the war saw Maggie at her cusp, before she started to believe she was a modern-day Boudicca, before she chased any possible rivals from her cabinet, before hubris overtook her, when she could still listen to experts and decide based on facts and not in opinions. But those are stories for later books in this superb series. Here is the entire age. Tony Benn, the dotty radical lord, Michael Foot, the decent but rather ineffectual labor leader, wily lunatic Red Ken Livingstone (and his pal, Jeremy Corbyn, who would later show much less political nous than Livingstone), the trio of rebels who founded the SDP (Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and David Owen), a party that, briefly, seemed on the verge of taking over from the tories and labour, patrician conservative wets (like sir Iain Gilmour, defense Secretary Francis Pym and Michael “Tarzan” Heseltine). Businessmen (yes, the ones he mentions are men), union leaders. He charts the decline of football and the unwelcome emergence of the hooligan. The upsurge of snooker as a competitive tv sport. Cricket as an emblem of the national spirit. The end of punk and disco, the advent of electronic music. Duran Duran. Spandau Ballet. Culture Club. Joy Division. The Cure. Queen and David Bowie. Brideshead Revisited. Spitting Image. Auf Wiedersehen Pet. He doesn’t mention Sapphire and Steel, a program which dates precisely to these years. I saw it and thought it rather frightening. The sale of public housing. Home computers (I didn’t know that the BBC had not just its own computer, but its own Basic language). The Sloane Ranger Handbook. Lady Di and her wedding. Basically all of the political, economic and cultural milestones were there. A wonderful monument to an age that in some ways was much like our own.
January 31, 2025
After being bruised by the Winter of Discontent, finally Labour was on retreat and in its place was Margaret Thatcher and the Tories, who claimed that Labour didn’t work and pledged to remake Britain in Mrs. Thatcher’s images of small government and more individual liberty. Continuing the general theme of the series, that is, general sense of decline accompanied by steady increase in general welfare, especially in daily consumption. Thus, as described throughout the book, In Thatcher’s first term, British heavy industries such as coal mining, automotive, and shipbuilding was dying and would never come back. Factory workers were laid off in droves, while at the same time, more British people were enjoying luxuries that their predecessors never had, such as personal computers, for example. In other front the New Romantics flourished as exemplified by The Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, while sports such as snooker being promoted as football was marred by hooliganism.
However, the most exciting front is as usual, is on politics. Sandbrook has done well in unmasking the myth behind Mrs. Thatcher and her government, showing that, while often being caricatured as a dogmatic Iron Lady, who were enthralled by the gospel of capitalism and sheer individualism, more often than not she was the one who put the break over her more zealous colleagues, Sir Geoffrey Howe, for example. His budget, which aimed to end inflation through painful cuts and skyrocketing unemployment rate, put Thatcher into a new low as the Prime Minister with the lowest popularity ever. Meanwhile, Labour party shot itself on the foot by entering vicious infighting. As Jim Callaghan stepped down from leadership, the Labour Rights were unable to put better candidate than Denis Healey (who were unbearably rude and patronising), and Labour Left took over with the rather out of place character in form of Michael Foot. As the Labour Right was neutered, Foot was opposed by the boogeymen on his left, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone from the GLC, while the more centrists Gang of Four, consisted of David Owen, Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins bolted to form Social Democratic Party, which proceeded to form alliance with the Liberal Party.
Things seemed to go downhill (or rather, Thatcher’s economic policy finally showing good results), when Argentina invaded the Falklands and ignited a war, which united most of the British people under the surge of nationalism and patriotism. After the surrender of Argentinian military in Port Stanley, Margaret Thatcher transformed from shrieking head matron into a politician who could do no wrong, as the Argentinian were defeated, inflation squashed, striking trade union obliterated and Labour Party was put on check, all at the same time. In the end, I found the book highly enjoyable, and I cannot help but feeling sad, since this is the final instalment of a magnificent series of books. I cannot highly recommend this series for everyone interested in all things British.
However, the most exciting front is as usual, is on politics. Sandbrook has done well in unmasking the myth behind Mrs. Thatcher and her government, showing that, while often being caricatured as a dogmatic Iron Lady, who were enthralled by the gospel of capitalism and sheer individualism, more often than not she was the one who put the break over her more zealous colleagues, Sir Geoffrey Howe, for example. His budget, which aimed to end inflation through painful cuts and skyrocketing unemployment rate, put Thatcher into a new low as the Prime Minister with the lowest popularity ever. Meanwhile, Labour party shot itself on the foot by entering vicious infighting. As Jim Callaghan stepped down from leadership, the Labour Rights were unable to put better candidate than Denis Healey (who were unbearably rude and patronising), and Labour Left took over with the rather out of place character in form of Michael Foot. As the Labour Right was neutered, Foot was opposed by the boogeymen on his left, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone from the GLC, while the more centrists Gang of Four, consisted of David Owen, Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins bolted to form Social Democratic Party, which proceeded to form alliance with the Liberal Party.
Things seemed to go downhill (or rather, Thatcher’s economic policy finally showing good results), when Argentina invaded the Falklands and ignited a war, which united most of the British people under the surge of nationalism and patriotism. After the surrender of Argentinian military in Port Stanley, Margaret Thatcher transformed from shrieking head matron into a politician who could do no wrong, as the Argentinian were defeated, inflation squashed, striking trade union obliterated and Labour Party was put on check, all at the same time. In the end, I found the book highly enjoyable, and I cannot help but feeling sad, since this is the final instalment of a magnificent series of books. I cannot highly recommend this series for everyone interested in all things British.
April 13, 2025
A particularly interesting period for me, as it's when I was finishing secondary school and starting independent life at university, a memorable life stage. That makes this book evocative and illuminating.
The fact that Sandbrook's approach is largely defensive of Thatcher is a welcome change of input, as I continue to live largely (by choice) in a wet-liberal/left bubble, give or take the odd in-law or so. Sandbrook is better informed than them, for sure. On the other hand he's also ten crucial years younger than me, and it would seem lacks the personal recollection of the sheer ambient vileness of Thatcherism as a prevailing ethos (reminiscent in some ways, though not quite so bad, of Trumpism).
Structurally the book seems to be a cross between a social/cultural picture and an evaluation of political stakes and moves - chapters on pop music (new romantics), sport (football hooligans), snooker (Steve 'interesting' Davis), interspersed with chapters on monetarism, the SDP, the Falklands war. Too much of the latter, imo: battle stories are not my thing. I do remember that my friends and I were all convinced the war was manufactured to boost her ratings, and Sandbrook convincingly defends her against that charge, but he didn't need to give us a blow-by-blow of Goose Green to get that across, I feel.
The defence of Thatcherism in general is also persuasive to me. In a nutshell DS's position is that Thatcher could have done what she did in a less abrasive and confrontational way, perhaps even a kinder way, but that the essence of her economic policy was better for the UK as a whole than anything that any of the other parties and the other tendencies in her party had to offer. Or more strongly, that it was necessary for the UK's recovery from its long-term decline since the 1950s.
I quite enjoyed the book, but often it feels like a scrapbook of quotes from contemporary newspapers and political/economic figures, pasted a bit hastily into place - it doesn't have a style suited to its length. It's fairly lively, but it sags. I also felt that it kind of lacks intellectual depth - appropriately, for a guy who apparently has a column on the Daily Mail. And finally, I was glad to get to the last page. But all the same, I think I may buy others in the series - after a bit of a breather.
The fact that Sandbrook's approach is largely defensive of Thatcher is a welcome change of input, as I continue to live largely (by choice) in a wet-liberal/left bubble, give or take the odd in-law or so. Sandbrook is better informed than them, for sure. On the other hand he's also ten crucial years younger than me, and it would seem lacks the personal recollection of the sheer ambient vileness of Thatcherism as a prevailing ethos (reminiscent in some ways, though not quite so bad, of Trumpism).
Structurally the book seems to be a cross between a social/cultural picture and an evaluation of political stakes and moves - chapters on pop music (new romantics), sport (football hooligans), snooker (Steve 'interesting' Davis), interspersed with chapters on monetarism, the SDP, the Falklands war. Too much of the latter, imo: battle stories are not my thing. I do remember that my friends and I were all convinced the war was manufactured to boost her ratings, and Sandbrook convincingly defends her against that charge, but he didn't need to give us a blow-by-blow of Goose Green to get that across, I feel.
The defence of Thatcherism in general is also persuasive to me. In a nutshell DS's position is that Thatcher could have done what she did in a less abrasive and confrontational way, perhaps even a kinder way, but that the essence of her economic policy was better for the UK as a whole than anything that any of the other parties and the other tendencies in her party had to offer. Or more strongly, that it was necessary for the UK's recovery from its long-term decline since the 1950s.
I quite enjoyed the book, but often it feels like a scrapbook of quotes from contemporary newspapers and political/economic figures, pasted a bit hastily into place - it doesn't have a style suited to its length. It's fairly lively, but it sags. I also felt that it kind of lacks intellectual depth - appropriately, for a guy who apparently has a column on the Daily Mail. And finally, I was glad to get to the last page. But all the same, I think I may buy others in the series - after a bit of a breather.
March 11, 2025
Finished the first book more or less on this day 2018. Taken me 7 years to get to the end of what has been published - 1979-82. Although the author does promise another book. The acknowledgements section state that this has already run 10 years over plans, so who knows. He may be concentrating on podcasts now.
We've move into an era I can remember reasonably well, ending at the Falklands War in 1982. I was 13. And quite obsessed by the Falklands War.
Initially, it states its going to be a non partisan account of the Thatcher years. Yet Dom is a Tory Boy, so he does paint her in a rather beautiful light that will annoy readers that cannot even bare to read her name. All I will say is unlike today's politicians - at least she believed what she was doing was for the good of country.
Usual format of the miniature of British life from the politics and home affairs (a bit too much on the SDP) to popular culture in essay chapters. I loved the section on Red Robbo. An ordinary man from Rubery who had such an influcence. What a fall from grace he had, as his own men got bored with industrial relations. A chapter on the bomb brought back memories and forced me to re-assess Breathing by Kate Bush. From an album I have listened to thousands of times without really noticing the theme. I dont like cricket, but as usual, the sports chapter is excellent. Ian Botham has a new fan. Even if I have seen his Johnson on Twitter. A different story.
850 pages but so well done that it never felt like a chore, even if it has set me three books behind on my challenge, taken a month to plough through and too heavy to take on public transport.
Great stuff and I really hope the series continues. Or I may have to go back to 1945 and start the David Kynaston similar series.
We've move into an era I can remember reasonably well, ending at the Falklands War in 1982. I was 13. And quite obsessed by the Falklands War.
Initially, it states its going to be a non partisan account of the Thatcher years. Yet Dom is a Tory Boy, so he does paint her in a rather beautiful light that will annoy readers that cannot even bare to read her name. All I will say is unlike today's politicians - at least she believed what she was doing was for the good of country.
Usual format of the miniature of British life from the politics and home affairs (a bit too much on the SDP) to popular culture in essay chapters. I loved the section on Red Robbo. An ordinary man from Rubery who had such an influcence. What a fall from grace he had, as his own men got bored with industrial relations. A chapter on the bomb brought back memories and forced me to re-assess Breathing by Kate Bush. From an album I have listened to thousands of times without really noticing the theme. I dont like cricket, but as usual, the sports chapter is excellent. Ian Botham has a new fan. Even if I have seen his Johnson on Twitter. A different story.
850 pages but so well done that it never felt like a chore, even if it has set me three books behind on my challenge, taken a month to plough through and too heavy to take on public transport.
Great stuff and I really hope the series continues. Or I may have to go back to 1945 and start the David Kynaston similar series.
May 28, 2022
Sandbrook writes thorough and expansive histories of the tenures of PMs since WWII. It appears the Thatcher years are to be spread over at least two volumes. I did feel that this was much too sympathetic to Thatcher in some respects. It's probably realistic to conclude that the end was always nigh for various moribund industries but Sandbrook, whilst elucidating on this, breezily ignored the fact that Thatcher made very little progress in realigning these regions away from heavy industry, prior to deindustrialization.
The book was more balanced on The Falklands War and I needed reminding of the terrible looses of life and life destroying injuries to so many in the Argentinian Air Force and British Navy encounters. The conflict, with all of its complexities, would fill volumes, so I intend to read a more in depth history of that.
Sandbrook exhibited obvious glee in demolishing the Hard Left, especially Benn and Livingstone, as well as a young Corbyn, who was hardly a key player during the period covered by this book. Their policies certainly did border on maniacal at times but it shouldn't be dismissed that what they espoused was essentially a fairer and more peaceful society.
I've read the whole Sandbrook series and enjoyed all of them for the incredible erudition and wide ranging scope, including chapters on the music and though less so in this volume, literature of the period. I hope he gets on with it a little faster as I'm very keen to see how he treats the Balir years. Of course, the next book will be Thatcher again so look forward to that.
The book was more balanced on The Falklands War and I needed reminding of the terrible looses of life and life destroying injuries to so many in the Argentinian Air Force and British Navy encounters. The conflict, with all of its complexities, would fill volumes, so I intend to read a more in depth history of that.
Sandbrook exhibited obvious glee in demolishing the Hard Left, especially Benn and Livingstone, as well as a young Corbyn, who was hardly a key player during the period covered by this book. Their policies certainly did border on maniacal at times but it shouldn't be dismissed that what they espoused was essentially a fairer and more peaceful society.
I've read the whole Sandbrook series and enjoyed all of them for the incredible erudition and wide ranging scope, including chapters on the music and though less so in this volume, literature of the period. I hope he gets on with it a little faster as I'm very keen to see how he treats the Balir years. Of course, the next book will be Thatcher again so look forward to that.
October 12, 2024
See my review of State of Emergency (1970-74) by the same author for a fuller review, but this carries on in the same vein and with the same level of quality. That means that I have effectively read 2,000 pages of his modern history back to back without interruption, though I did read another book alongside the early chapters of this one.
Not much to add to my reviews of his previous histories other than that, in covering 3 years in 900 pages, this one reaches new levels of detail, but still remains genuinely gripping. The truth is that these were 3 very eventful years, covering Margaret Thatcher coming to power, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the British economy and British industry, with the mixture of personal enrichment and personal destitution which that caused, Tony Benn and the fight for the identity of the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and the event that changed everything: the Falklands War, an event in respect of which, on reading this book, I realise that I am much more equivocal now than I was at the time.
I will be reading his 1964-70 book next, and while I would be happy to pick it up straight away without interruption, a pile-up of other books is calling.
Not much to add to my reviews of his previous histories other than that, in covering 3 years in 900 pages, this one reaches new levels of detail, but still remains genuinely gripping. The truth is that these were 3 very eventful years, covering Margaret Thatcher coming to power, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the British economy and British industry, with the mixture of personal enrichment and personal destitution which that caused, Tony Benn and the fight for the identity of the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and the event that changed everything: the Falklands War, an event in respect of which, on reading this book, I realise that I am much more equivocal now than I was at the time.
I will be reading his 1964-70 book next, and while I would be happy to pick it up straight away without interruption, a pile-up of other books is calling.
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