J.B. Priestley famously described the 'three Englands' he saw in the 1930s; old England, 19th-century England and the new, post-war England. In this book Juliet Gardiner provides a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade, bringing the complex experience of 1930s Britain alive.
This History offers a new and comprehensive picture of 1930s British literature. The '30s have often been cast as a literary-historical anomaly, either as a 'low, dishonest decade', a doomed experiment in combining art and politics, or as a 'late modernist' afterthought to the intense period of artistic experimentation in the 1920s. By contrast, the contributors to this volume explore the contours of a 'long 1930s' by repositioning the decade and its characteristic concerns at the heart of twentieth-century literary history. This book expands the range of writers covered, moving beyond a narrow focus on towering canonical figures to draw in a more diverse cast of characters, in terms of race, gender, class, and forms of artistic expression. The book's four sections emphasize the decade's characteristic geographical and sexual identities; the new media landscapes and institutional settings its writers operated in; questions of commitment and autonomy; and British writing's international entanglements.
This wide-ranging study of British writers and poets of the 1930s--including Auden, Isherwood, Spender, Waugh, and Greene-- examines the masterpieces of that momentous decade, not in linguistic isolation, but in the contexts--social, political, historical, ideological, and personal--in which they were composed. Cunningham maps out the dominant images and concerns, nothing less than the central obsessions and imposing images of the '30s imagination. He analyzes the obsession with violence, the "destructive element" of post-World War consciousness; the cult of youth, of schools and schoolmasters; the infatuation with heroes--flyers, mountaineers, and racing car drivers--and the related concern about "being small," weak, or neurotic in an age of mass politics. In order to illustrate this kaleidoscope of themes, Cunningham examines not only the canonical texts, but also "minor" forms and writings, including detective stories, films, and popular songs, showing how these neglected genres also illuminate the work of this period.
In a series of case-studies, ranging widely from documentary film and the writings of J.B. Priestley to postwar historiography and Remains of the Day, this book explores the ever-changing and hotly contested narratives of Britain in the 1930s. The authors argue that images of 'the Thirties' have been a continual presence in the construction of the wartime and postwar world, and in particular in the emergent discourse of social democracy and its subsequent decline.
In the 1930s, Britain underwent the most profound economic crisis of the twentieth century, with high unemployment, wage cuts, benefit cuts and an overall deterioration in living standards. This was Britain suffering from the cold spread around the world by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and it was a decade remembered for its austerity. Yet there was another side to the decade. Industrial output, which fell in 1930-32, picked up in 1933, and by the following year had exceeded 1929 totals. Remarkable growth was experienced in 1935-38, despite a shorter working week, as productivity rose with the adoption of more productive industrial techniques. There was a housing boom and also a consumer boom fuelled by cheaper clothes and household goods. Slums were cleared and smart new houses erected all over Britain. At the same time social services improved markedly, and a diversification of leisure activities was made possible by new technology, transport improvements and the provision of paid holidays. 1930s Britain provides a realistic portrait of a very diverse, and always fascinating, decade in British social history, with coverage of the home and neighborhood, work, food and drink, shopping and style, entertainment, education, social services, health and transport giving readers a truly well-rounded view of life in 1930s Britain.
With austerity biting hard and fascism on the march at home and abroad, the Britain of the 1930s grappled with many problems familiar to us today. Moving beyond the traditional focus on 'the Auden generation', this book surveys the literature of the period in all its diversity, from working class, women, queer and postcolonial writers to popular crime and thriller novels. In this way, the book explores the uneven processes of modernization and cultural democratization that characterized the decade. A major critical re-evaluation of the decade, the book covers such writers as Eric Ambler, Mulk Raj Anand, Katharine Burdekin, Agatha Christie, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Christopher Isherwood, Storm Jameson, Ethel Mannin, Naomi Mitchison, George Orwell, Christina Stead, Evelyn Waugh and many others.
'One of the most relentlessly brilliant studies of twentieth-century Britain ... these young historians have found a marvellous theme and stuck to it. Theirs is the glory!' Professor Arthur Marwick, History The 1930s - remembered as the decade of dole queues and hunger marches, mass unemployment, the means test, and the rise of fascism - also saw the development of new industries, the growth of comfortable suburbia, and rising standards of living for many. In Britain in the Depression, the authors look behind the legends for an objective - and timely - reassessment, as Britain again struggles with the economic and spiritual ills of recession and unemployment.
Here is a comprehensive analysis of rearmament under the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. It reveals the primary determinants of events and provides important new information regarding the principal considerations underlying Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. The author concentrates on a problem that was of central concern to the government. For this reason, and because he draws on the recently opened Cabinet and Treasury papers at the Public Record Office in London, he is able to offer a broader view than that of the existing studies. He describes in detail the interaction of the Cabinet, Treasury, and Armed Services, and the influence of the financial and industrial communities. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Art Deco movement influenced design and marketing in many different industries in the 1930s, and the British motor industry was no exception. This fascinating book is divided into two parts; the first explains and illustrates the Art Deco styling elements that link these streamlined car designs, describing their development, their commonality, and their unique aeronautical names, and is liberally illustrated with contemporary images. The book then goes on to portray British streamlined production cars made between 1933 and 1936, illustrated with colour photographs of surviving cars. This is a unique account of a radical era in automotive design.
From statesmen and military commanders to ordinary Britons, a bold, sweeping history of Britain's entrance into World War II—and its efforts to survive it—illuminating the ways in which the war permanently transformed a nation and its people “Might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written.” —The Wall Street Journal Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict’s first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles pressing questions such as whether the war could have been avoided, how it could have been lost, how well the British lived up to their own values, and ultimately, what difference the war made to the fate of the nation. In answering these questions, he reexamines our assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which the Second World War transformed British culture and society. This bracing account draws on a lively cast of characters—from the political and military leaders who made the decisions, to the ordinary citizens who lived through them—in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. A sweeping and groundbreaking epic, Britain at Bay gives us a fresh look at the opening years of the war, and illuminates the integral moments that, for better or for worse, made Britain what it is today.