The United Kingdom Since 1945 by Wrigley, Chris;

Short description:

The United Kingdom Since 1945 is an economic and social history providing an appraisal of seventy-five years of British and Northern Irish history.

Long description:

The United Kingdom Since 1945: A Post-Imperial Nation is an economic and social history providing an appraisal of seventy-five years of British and Northern Irish history.

The UK emerged from the Second World War victorious but impoverished. After a period of austerity, the UK participated in the boom in the international economy that continued from the 1950s until the 1970s. Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Party Prime Minister, famously told the electorate in 1957 that the country had ‘never had it so good’. With global decolonization, UK trade turned more to the European Economic Community (EEC) and less to the Commonwealth countries, with the UK joining the EEC and its successor the European Union, from 1973 until 2020. All four countries saw population growth, both from the birth rate and  substantial net inward migration. But, as this volume argues, developments were not uncomplicated. The need for more housing, for example, was partly met by tower blocks, but some of these deteriorated after relatively short lives and were demolished, while others became sink estates. Urban change also saw the decline of shopping centres and small independent shops. In addition to examining this economic and social change, Chris Wrigley focuses on popular culture, from the growth in TV to developments in music and art, as well as the continued influences of declining entertainments like the music hall. The volume combines a focus on post-imperial features with a recognition of the long shadow cast by the Second World War.

The United Kingdom Since 1945 is distinctive in its long timespan and its breadth of coverage, and is the perfect introduction for all readers interested in the complex contemporary history of this diverse nation.

"This is a lucid and comprehensive anatomy of the United Kingdom since 1945, as the nation recovered from the Second World War and built a welfare state, but also lost an empire and struggled to recover a coherent identity and geo-political role in a new, US-led, globalized world order. Teachers and students alike will appreciate the clarity with which it surveys the key lines of social, economic, political, and cultural change that have occurred over the past eighty or so years to make the UK what it is today. A balanced and empirically rich introductory text."

-Tom Crook, Oxford Brookes

‘This is a wide-ranging and timely study of the United Kingdom since 1945, which brings together key economic, cultural and social developments in one volume, and also relates them to one another. Chris Wrigley has written a well-informed study of a Post-Imperial nation that will be of interest to everyone who wants to understand the transformation of the nation since the Second World War. The book situates the United Kingdom both within European and global developments as well as offering an account of changes at a national level in an interesting and informative way.’

-Avram Taylor, Northumbria University

"Written in a lively and accessible manner, this book offers a fascinating analysis of the major economic and social developments in the United Kingdom from 1945 to 2020. It is an incisive account of austerity and affluence, examining the impact of trade, industry and financial structures on the economy, people and places. The text offers compelling insights into social history by exploring broad-ranging developments in tourism, welfare, music, literature and popular entertainment, and the impact these had on the way people lived.  It is a perceptive and highly readable contribution to our understanding of the history of the United Kingdom in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

-Nicole Robertson, Sheffield Hallam University  

Table of Contents:

                                TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

1 Imperial Aftermath 

2 People and Work

3 Impoverished Victory to Membership of the EEC

4 Services and Industry

5 Aspects of Science: Atomic Energy, Plastics, Information Technology and Television

6 Social Welfare

7Transport and Tourism

8 From Music Hall to Independent Television

9 Art, Music and Literature

10 Revolts into Style

11 From the Late Twentieth Century: Literature, Film, Music and Art

12 Affluence and Austerity

Index