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'I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.' So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. Sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed the first two volumes of her uniquely detailed and moving diaries, written during World War II and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project, and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood. This third compelling volume sees Nella, now in her sixties, writing of what ordinary people felt during those years of growing prosperity in a modernising Britain. Her diary offers a detailed, moving and humorous narrative of daily life at a time that shaped the society we live in today. It is an account that's full of surprises as we learn more about her relationship with 'my husband' (never 'Will') and her fears of nuclear war. Outwardly Nella's life was commonplace; but behind this mask were a penetrating mind and a lively pen. As David Kynaston said on Radio 4, Nella Last 'will come to be seen as one of the major twentieth century English diarists.'
The complete collection of the diaries of Nella Last 'I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value...' So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. More than sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed three volumes of her vivid and moving diaries, written during the Second World War and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project - and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood. The Diaries of Nella Last, brings together into a single volume the best of Nella's prolific outpourings, including a great deal of new, unpublished material from the war years. Capturing the everyday trials and horrors of wartime Britain and the nation's transition into peacetime and beyond, Nella's touching and often humorous narrative provides an invaluable historical portrait of what daily life was like for ordinary people in the 1940s and 1950s. Outwardly Nella's life was commonplace; but behind this mask were a penetrating mind and a lively pen. As David Kynaston said on Radio 4, Nella Last 'will come to be seen as one of the major twentieth century English diarists.'
Outwardly Nella's life was probably seen as ordinary; but behind this mask were a lively mind and a persistent pen - a pen that never gave up over almost three decades, reporting, describing, pondering, and disclosing. Nella, 55 when the war ends, writes of what ordinary people felt during those years of privation, hope and the re-building of Britain, providing a moving and inspiring account of the years that shaped the society we live in today. Her diary offers a detailed, moving and humorous narrative of the changing experiences of ordinary people at this time, and thoughts on the aftermath of war and whether 'peace' really meant peace, for everyone.
Family Britain continues David Kynaston's groundbreaking series Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. 'The book is a marvel ... the level of detail is precise and fascinating' Sunday Telegraph 'A wonderfully illuminating picture of the way we were' The Times As in Austerity Britain, an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices drive the narrative. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as austerity and rationing gradually give way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. These and many other voices give a rich, unsentimental picture of everyday life in the 1950s. We also encounter well-known figures on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals) and Tiger's Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester). All this is part of a colourful, unfolding tapestry, in which the great national events - the Tories returning to power, the death of George VI, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis - jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavour: Butlin's holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers, Hancock's Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston's Family Britain offers an unrivalled take on a largely cohesive, ordered, still very hierarchical society gratefully starting to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s towards domestic ease and affluence.
'Next to being a mother, I'd have loved to write books...' Nella Last, Oct 8, 1939 In September 1939, housewife and mother Nella Last began a diary whose entries, in their regularity, length and quality, have created a record of the Second World War which is powerful, fascinating and unique. When war broke out, Nella's younger son joined the army while the rest of the family tried to adapt to civilian life. Writing each day for the "Mass Observation" project, Nella, a middle-aged housewife from the bombed town of Barrow, shows what people really felt during this time. This was the period in which she turned 50, saw her children leave home, and reviewed her life and her marriage - which she eventually compares to slavery. Her growing confidence as a result of her war work makes this a moving (though often comic) testimony, which, covering sex, death and fear of invasion, provides a new, unglamorised, female perspective on the war years.
The perfect 1950s Housewife: glamorous, motherly, doting, supportive, flirty yet wholesome, endlessly cheerful...To the modern woman this all seems rather terrifying (and frankly a little nauseating). There's nothing like a glamorous, high-heeled mother at the school gates to make the rest of us feel like overweight, ill-tempered, soup-stained slatterns. And yet those marvels of 1950s femininity seemed to manage to be effortlessly lovely at every turn. This book guides you through the crazy golf course of fashion, beauty, home skills, child rearing, lino-laying, husband pleasing and general marital bliss.And if, at the end of this extraordinary journey of enlightenment, you have any questions or nagging doubts, you need only consult 'The Wireless Doctor', who can help with anything from naughty children, stroppy husbands, or 'intimate' neglect. Grab yourself a cocktail and a cheese straw and bury your nose in this glorious guide that will have you apologising to your mother for the rest of your life.
A “masterful . . . brilliantly constructed novel” of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian). It’s 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it’s not just a political tangle that’s kept him tethered to the country. There’s also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what’s best for Southeast Asia, but rather a “Third Force”: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle’s blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it’s ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing. Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene’s “complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue” would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).
'Ambitious, humane and absorbing . . . this book could not be better.' Spectator 'A deeply satisfying chronicle of women's lives at a time when this nation was tested as never before. Introduces you to hundreds of wonderful women - a magnificent regiment - you wish you had met in the flesh, and when you close it you feel enlarged as well as amazed by their experiences. Women were fire watchers, ARP workers, first aiders, ambulance drivers, police officers, messengers, transport, demolition and repair workers. A rich, entwined narrative, which moves in and out of the lives of an absorbing cast of characters during ten years.' Daily Mail 'A magnificent work of social history written with passion and panache.' Daily Express 'Splendid. Using diaries, autobiographies, memoirs and interviews, Nicholson charts the work, the lives, the relationships and the emotions of typists, factory workers, housewives, debutantes and artists working as nurses, in the services, in intelligence, in factories, on the land and as codebreakers. A tremendous achievement.' Observer 'A deeply moving account of female courage both at home and overseas. The joy of Nicholson's book is the way she has plaited scores of individual stories into a richly textured account of the many forms that female courage can take.' Mail on Sunday
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.