Family Britain, 1951-1957 (126 page)

14. Greenslade,
Press Gang
, pp 136–7; Brenda Maddox,
Maggie
(2003), p 64; Richard Cockett, ‘The
Observer
and the Suez Crisis’,
Contemporary Record
, Summer 1991, pp 27–30; Richard Davenport-Hines (ed),
Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson
(2006), p 210.

15.
Independent
, 9 Sep 1997 (Kate Watson-Smyth); Hampton (ed),
Joyce & Ginnie
,

p 222;
New Yorker
, 12 Jan 1957;
Independent
, 15 Jan 2003 (Robert Fisk).

16. David Kynaston,
The Financial Times
(1988), pp 248–51;
Encounter
, Jan 1957, pp 38–44; Turtle, Nov–Dec 1956;
New Yorker
, 10 Nov 1956;
Crossman
, p 572.

17. John Amis,
Amiscellany
(1985), p 114;
The Times
, 14 Nov 1956;
Daily Mirror
, 21 Nov 1956; Moorehead,
Bernstein
, p 266; Amis, p 486; St John, 9 Dec 1956; Clive Ellis,
Fabulous Fanny Cradock
(Stroud, 2007), pp 73–6;
Fowles
, p 385; Heap, 25 Dec 1956; Mark Robinson,
100 Greatest TV Ads
(2000), p 84; Travis Elborough,
The Bus We Loved
(2005), pp 69–71; Tony Mason, ‘Stanley Matthews’, in Richard Holt (ed),
Sport and the Working Class in Modern Britain
(Manchester, 1990),

p 159.

18. Robert J. Wybrow,
Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87
(Basingstoke, 1989), p 48; Nicolson (ed),
Diaries
, p 328; M-O A, D5353, 9 Jan 1957; John Campbell,
Pistols at Dawn
(2009), pp 266–8;
New Yorker
, 26 Jan 1957; M-O A, D5353, 10 Jan 1957;
Evening Standard
, 10 Jan 1957; Haines, 10 Jan 1957.

Afterword

1.
Woman
, 5 Jan 1957.

2.
Woman and Shopping
, Jan/Feb 1957, pp 42–45.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the following for kindly allowing me to reproduce copyright material: Evelyn Abrams (Mark Abrams); Ouida V. Ascroft (Florence Speed); Lady Diana Baer (Mollie Panter-Downes); Joan Bakewell; BBC Written Archives Centre; Birmingham Libraries and Archives (extract from the diaries of Mary King, collection reference MS1547); Ken Blakemore (
Sunnyside Down
); Michael Bloch (James Lees-Milne); Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd (extract from
An Immaculate Mistake
© 1991 Paul Bailey); Veronica Bowater (Vere Hodgson); Alan Brodie Representation (
The Diaries of Noël Coward
, on behalf of NC Aventales AG, successor in the title to the Estate of Noël Coward); Rene and Michael Chaplin (Sid Chaplin); Jonathan Clowes Ltd (
Letters
copyright © 2001 Kingsley Amis,
Lucky Jim
copyright © 1953 Kingsley Amis, on behalf of the Literary Estate of Kingsley Amis; extract from
The Reasoner
copyright © Doris Lessing 1956, on behalf of Doris Lessing, extract from
In Pursuit of the English
copyright © Doris Lessing 1960, on behalf of Doris Lessing, extract from
Walking in the Shade
copyright © Doris Lessing 1998); Susan Crosland (
New Fabian Essays
and
The Future of Socialism
); Virginia Crossman (Richard Crossman); Alan Crowe (Carole Anne Stafford); Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London (on behalf of the Trustees of the Mass-Observation Archive, copyright © Trustees of the Mass-Observation Archive; extract from
England, Half English
copyright © Colin MacInnes 1961, on behalf of the Estate of Colin MacInnes); Renée Daly (Lawrence Daly); The Dartington Hall Trust Archive; Hunter Davies; Norman Dennis; Peter Dunn (Cyril Dunn); Faber & Faber Ltd (extract from
Untold Stories
by Alan Bennett; extract from
Free Association
by Stephen Berkoff;
Selected Letters of Philip Larkin
copyright © The Estate of Philip Larkin;
Letters Home
copyright © The Estate of Aurelia Plath); Margaret Fenton (Sir Frederic Osborn); Margaret Forster; Enid Grant (Enid Palmer); Rachel Gross (Geoffrey Gorer); HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (
Bad Blood
© Lorna Sage 2001;
The Kenneth Williams Diaries
© Kenneth Williams 1993, 1994); Pamela Hendicott (Judy Haines); Hazel Holt (Barbara Pym); Steve Humphries (
The Making of Modern London, 1945–85
;
A Century of Childhood
;
The Fifties and Sixties
); Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Lord Hinton of Bankside); Islington Local History Centre (Gladys Langford); Ian Jack (
Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain 1977–87
, 1987;
The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain: Writings 1989–2009
, 2009); Dan Jacobson; Ruth I. Johns (
St Ann’s Nottingham: Inner-city Voices
, Plowright Press 2002, 2006); Little, Brown Book Group Ltd (
Ricky
by Ricky Tomlinson); Ione Lee (Judy Haines); The Marvell Press (extract from ‘Born Yesterday’ by Philip Larkin from
The Less Deceived
); John McGarry; Jamie Muir and Denis Norden (Frank Muir and Denis Norden Archive); John Murray Ltd (
The Boy Who Loved Books
by John Sutherland); News Group Newspapers Limited Archive (Papers of the John Hilton Bureau); The Harold Nicolson Estate; Ingrid Pollard (Sylvan Pollard Estate); Allan Preston (Kenneth Preston); The Random House Group Ltd (extract from
White City
by Donald James Wheal, published by Century; extract from
Years of Hope
by Tony Benn, published by Hutchinson; extract from
What’s It All About?
by Cilla Black, published by Ebury Press; extract from
Who’s Crazee Now?
by Noddy Holder, published by Ebury Press; extract from
The Changing Forest
by Dennis Potter, published by Secker & Warburg; extract from
Jacky Daydream
by Jacqueline Wilson, published by Doubleday; extract from
Coming Home
by John Betjeman published by Vintage); Marian Ray and Robin Raynham (Marian Raynham); Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd (
Diaries 1939–1972
by Frances Partridge copyright © 1999 Frances Partridge) Anton Rippon (
A Derby Bo
y
)
; Basil Streat (Sir Raymond Streat); Valerie Tedder; Brian Thompson (
Clever Girl 
); Peter Townsend; Sylvia Turtle (Florence Turtle); Roxana and Matthew Tynan (
The Life of Kenneth Tynan
by Kathleen Tynan, theatre writings, letters); Phyllis Willmott; Jennifer Worth; Toby Young (Michael Young).

I am indebted, in many different ways, to archivists, librarians, fellow-historians, friends and acquaintances. They include: Mark Aston; Michael Banton; Paul Barker; Peter Bevington; Piers Brendon; Sophie Bridges; John Campbell; Judith Downie; Elisabeth and Peter Dunn; Eamon Dyas; Helen Ford; Laura Gardner; Kate Gavron; Geoffrey Goodman; John Gross; Janie Hampton; Lynsey Hanley; Sue Harper; Pam Hendicott; Dick Holt; Felix Lancashire; Roy Lumb; Nicholas Mays; Joe Moran; Blake Morrison; Andrew Motion; Juliet Nicolson; Jonathan Oates; Erin O’Neill; Robert Opie; Jack Ozanne; Stanley Page; Michael Passmore; Alison Ravetz; Andrew Riley; John Roberts; John Southall; Todd Swift; David Taylor; John Wakefield; Andy Ward; Yvonne Widger; Melanie Wood; Ken Worpole. At the Special Collections (including the Mass-Observation Archive) at the University of Sussex, I am grateful for their help to Fiona Courage, Dorothy Sheridan and the staff, including Catrina Hey, Jessica Scantlebury and Karen Watson. The London Library remains London’s most congenial, inspiriting library, and I am grateful to the staff for all their constructive kindness over the years. This book could not have been written without ready access to the hard-copy local newspaper collection at the British Newspaper Library in Colindale. I am not the only historian who hopes and trusts that this access will continue, whether at Colindale or elsewhere.

    Since 2001 I have been a visiting professor at Kingston University, where over the last few years there have been, under the welcoming auspices of Gail Cunningham and Philip Spencer, a series of (for me) enjoyable and stimulating ‘New Jerusalem’ seminars run from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Those attending have included Joe Bailey, Peter Beck, Brian Cathcart, Norma Clarke, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, John Davis, Paul Dixon, Ilaria Favretto, Jeremy Nuttall, John Stuart and Frank Whately.

    The following people not only kindly read and commented on all or part of the various drafts, but were also much-appreciated sources of help and encouragement: Joe Bailey; Mike Burns; Gail Cunningham; Juliet Gardiner; Sara Marsh; Dil Porter; Harry Ricketts; David Warren; Phyllis Willmott. I owe a particular debt to Phyllis Willmott, who since we first met in 2002 has been an unfailingly generous as well as shrewd supporter-cum-critic of what I am trying to do.

    Getting this book over the line has involved what my father would have called ‘a Harry Wragg finish’. I am deeply grateful to the following people: Annalisa Zisman (Back to Balance) for keeping me loose; Amanda Howard (Superscript Editorial Services) for transcribing my tapes with remarkable accuracy against very tight deadlines; Andrea Belloli for her sensitive copy-editing; Catherine Best and Patric Dickinson for reading the proofs; Douglas Matthews for compiling the index; my agent Deborah Rogers and her colleagues Hannah Westland and Mohsen Shah; and at Bloomsbury, the very hard-working trio of Bill Swainson, Nick Humphrey and Anna Simpson, whose good humour as well as good judgement have done much to make this a broadly enjoyable experience.

    My largest debt is, as usual, to my family: Laurie, George, Michael and above all my wife Lucy, a pillar throughout of practical, intellectual and emotional support.

New Malden,

Summer 2009

Picture Credits

Churchill and Attlee survey the opening of the Festival of Britain, 4 May 1951 (
Copyright Museum of London
)

St Bride’s, London, June 1951: over ten years after the Blitz (
The Times
)

Redgrave Road Residents’ Association, Basildon: day trip to Clacton-on-Sea, 1952 (
Courtesy of Anita Woollard
)

Dick Etheridge, leading shop steward at Longbridge, addresses Austin carworkers, 1952 (
Getty Images
)

Camden High Street, 1952 (
Copyright Museum of London
)

Rush for Scotland vs. England tickets, Hampden Park, Glasgow, March 1952 (
NI Syndication
)

Outside an Ebbw Vale chapel, a summer Sunday, 1952 (
Getty Images
)

Petticoat Lane, 1952 (
Copyright Museum of London
)

Lady Cranbrook recreates the Coronation experience for members of Preston and Langley’s W.I., Hertfordshire (
Getty Images
)

Commercial travellers in Maude’s Commercial Hotel, Halifax, 1953 (
Getty Images
)

City Surveyor and Engineer (Sir Herbert Manzoni) and City Architect (A. G. Sheppard Fidler) study Birmingham’s Inner Ring Road Scheme, January 1954 (
Getty Images
)

Empress of Britain
under construction: Fairfield’s Shipyard, Glasgow, January 1955 (
Herald & Times, Glasgow
)

Mecca Dance Hall, Tottenham, May 1954 (
Getty Images
)

Coupon-checkers at Littlewoods Pools, Liverpool, 1954 (
Getty Images
)

Inverness, 1950s (
Mary Evans Picture Library
)

Woolworths, 1955: the Christmas rush (
Getty Images
)

Mulberry Street Primary School, Manchester, 1956 (
Getty Images
)

New Union Street, Coventry: reconstruction, c. 1955 (
Photographer unknown
)

British Amateur Ballroom Dancing Championships, Blackpool, 1955 (Getty Images)

Leeds, 1957 (Mary Evans Picture Library)

West Indian immigrants wait at Customs, Southampton Docks, May 1956 (Getty Images)

Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1957 (NCJ Media Ltd)