Saturday, a bit of Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday, I read the almost 600 page history of England (1962 through January 1965), A Northern Wind by David Kynaston.
Faerie would prefer sharing the lap with a smaller book.
She did manage to squeeze in next to the book.
But after the first couple of hours, she abandoned me for the more spacious quarters of a bed.
The preface captures why I love Kynaston’s histories so much. This is the eighth book in his series. In the author’s introductory words:
“Tales of a New Jerusalem, a social history of post-war Britain, about how and why ‘1945’ became ‘1979: not quite a predestined story, indeed a story involving considerable happenstance, yet one where major, plate-shifting historical forces were at work, mainly in the direction of greater individualism. Tales also seeks to show – through as wide a range as possible of contemporary sources, including diaries and letters of the obscure as well as the famous, local papers as well as national, tabloids as well as broadsheets, Coronation Street and The Archers as well as Panorama and party political broadcasts-what Britain looked like, sounded like and felt like during these three decades or more, not least as a monocultural society gave way contentiously but unstoppably to a multicultural one. A partial and incomplete evocation, inevitably, but worth the attempt.”
The previous books are “A World to Build and Smoke in the Valley (gathered together in Austerity Britain); The Certainties of Place and A Thicker Cut (gathered in Family Britain); Opening the Box and A Shake of the Dice (gathered in Modernity Britain); and a snapshot of four months on the verge of the semi-mythical Sixties’, On the Cusp.“
Here again is why I adore his books in the very first paragraph of chapter one:
“All So Worrying
“Oh such golden weather now, exactly right for the Harvest decorating, in the morning at Church, which we did, with many others,’ gratefully recorded Madge Martin, married to an Oxford clergyman, on 6 October 1962. No such cheerfulness this Saturday from the elderly Georgiana Tench, holed up in a convalescent home, probably in south-west London. ‘Mostly dry, with some sunny periods but some very dark & dreary ones. I have not felt very well, & found things very dreary – so much alone.’ Loneliness, too, for middle-aged Jennie Hill, living with her tyrannical mother in a village near Winchester, but for the most part managing through the daily round to overcome bouts of depression. Today, just three short sentences: Usual Sat work done. Busy day. Good Dixon TV programme.’ A trio of female diarists, then, none of them with exciting prospects or an obvious claim to posterity’s attention; but, like my grandparents living in small-town Shropshire, the ‘Sixties” belonged to them as much as to anyone else.“
And later, in a cold winter:
“In Chingford, serious angst for a middle-aged housewife, Judy Haines:
I talk too much.
Forgot to use my lipstick for Choir. John [her husband] didn’t see it mattered; and to make up my mind to cancel Choir and go home for it or go in. I felt flat. Went in because I couldn’t face going home to silence. Glad I went. The usual silence from John on way home.
Didn’t want supper. Went to bed. Couldn’t sleep. What to do about it? I can’t take a job until I find someone to do my present”Cook-general’ one. I can talk less. Then I can’t be snubbed.“
I would like to read every word you ever wrote, Judy Haines. I wish I had known you.
From the first volume onward, Mass Observation diarist Nella Last was often quoted. I was led to her published diaries which were a delight. Most of the other “ordinary people” diarists have not been published. It would be my dream to go the Mass Observation archives and spend a year just reading the diaries.
One of the continuing themes is the slum clearance and building of tower blocks and modern housing for the former slum dwellers. Those slums, many with shared outdoor privies, were a community of neighbours and shops and pubs, and I have wept in a previous volume over the words of lonely old people shunted into a tower block and losing their community.
“Joseph soon afterwards embarked on a tour of slum areas to see for himself, he ‘discovered’….that elderly people liked their slums but that the young didn’t, even though they had covered them in the veneer of an affluent society.
For the moment, though, the irresistible force was with indiscriminate, year-zero, carpet-bombing clearance.” Whole blocks were knocked down. (This is also a running theme in the telly series that we just finished twelve seasons of, Call the Midwife.)
This rends my heart to bits:
A “Council’s housing committee in June 1964 in the context of plans to demolish the much-loved prefab bungalows, with their well-tended gardens, on the Beckett Park Estate:
Perhaps it would not be out of place for somebody in this chamber [declared Councillor Vyvyan Cardno] to question the rightness of these multi-storey flats. I know that both sides of the chamber are proud of them. …….
But the people who have been living in homes and gardens – I don’t mean people who are being removed from slum properties, but the people who have spent up to the last 20 years in delightful little houses and gardens. To them it is a nightmare. And anyone can – as we all do – visit people in these houses. We visit these houses; we meet the people in the gardens, and we meet them outside their houses and inside their houses, with the doors open. You canvass a block of flats; you go up the stone stairs, and you meet locked doors; and a face comes round the door rather like a slug from around a stone.”
And, of course, this resonates with me: “…living on an estate full of flats literally heightened the chances of being overlooked in an intrusive way from flats in the block opposite. ‘I don’t care to be overlooked by anyone,’ said an older working-class man. ‘Not nice to feel you’re overlooked by friends or anyone. All times, I’d like to be absolutely private.’
Can you imagine losing your little house and garden due to well-meaning government clearance? It actually happened to Bryan’s family and to Allan’s family in clearance for a college and a freeway in Settle, but at least they got payments and were able to build and garden anew to their liking, not being shoved off into a high rise.
It continues to break my heart to read about the slum clearances and makes me think of the song Tower Block Kid.
Other factors which delight me are ongoing mentions of certain favourite writers of mine like Barbara Pym, Iris Murdoch, and Virginia Ironside. An example from the terribly cold winter of 1963:
“Barbara Pym, still making in early February a few final revisions to her new novel before sending it hopefully to Cape, related to a friend abroad a somehow quintessentially English snatch of conversation.
Mrs Parry-Chivers, wife of the vicar of St Lawrence the Martyr, Brondesbury: ‘How are you off for candles, dear?’ Pym: ‘Oh, all right, thank you, and we haven’t had any total blackouts yet.’ Mrs P-C: Well, don’t forget there’s plenty of candles in the church, dear – I should take some if I were you.’
…And “‘I gather from photos,’ reflected Iris Murdoch next day about the Rolling Stones, ‘that they carry ambiguity of appearance to lengths which might satisfy even me.'”
And if perchance you are a fan of The Beatles, they figure large in these years.
Having seen the film Quadrophenia more than once, I was fascinated with further reports of seaside holiday battles between the Mods and the Rockers, which make our Rod Run look tame.
Beyond the diaries, the book delves into racism, anti-immigrant prejudice, and politics local and national. Often the paragraphs are so dense with information that I have to read them twice, and the effort is always worthwhile.
A continuing saga is the reduction of the British Railway, meaningful to me because when I visited the UK in 1975, many small routes had been discontinued, making a Britrail pass an exercise in frustration when I wanted to get down the mid coast of Wales. And it includes a mention of a favourite poem of mine:
‘What do you think of Beeching?’ Larkin asked Monica Jones on 28 March, the day after the publication of the almost instantly famous/infamous report on the drastic reshaping of Britain’s railway system. *”I remember Adlestrop”, he added, ‘takes on a new meaning, not to mention Sunny Prestatyn.”
…..”A third of the rail network to be closed and ripped up, many line to remain open for freight only, a total of 2,363 stations and halts to be closed.” This television broadcast “which included melancholic verses …. beginning They’re closing the stations with beautiful names, Appledore and Chasewater and Saffron Walden…” gave the title to that chapter. “They’re closing all the stations with the beautiful names.”
And more about the beautiful names:
“Nostalgia indeed, an emotion unerringly tapped into by ‘Slow Train’, the song of lament by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann which formed part of At the Drop of Another Hat that autumn and namechecked such doomed stations as Kirby Muxloe, Blandford Forum, Chorlton-cum-Hardy (no churns, no porter, no cat on a seat), Dogdyke, Tumby Woodside, Trouble House Halt and Windmill End.“
From a chapter on unions, the obituary of union leader Jim Jones would not be a bad one to have: “‘He never shifted from his commitment to socialist ideals, immovably determined, sometimes difficult even with his closest friends, rarely disposed to take criticisms lightly, sometimes lacking charitable humour, but always with unflinching integrity. He was not the easiest companion, yet he was the kind of man anyone would respect.'”
So…if any of you might be inspired to read Kynaston’s books, I would be pleased. So far I have never met another soul who has read them or even heard of them.
I found on Goodreads a link to this excellent review which expresses my great worry about whether or not both Kynaston and me have time and life left to get through the series as planned. He is older than me by a bit, and can I live and read till 85 years old to get to the final volume?
I have more books to find that were mentioned by Kynaston, notably The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson: “focussed in the most mundane details about the extent of the wasteland on which the Warwickshire cottager could run his pig, or about the number of days on which Cornish tin-miners supplemented their income by pilchard fishing, or about the wording of the by-law protecting the Northamptonshire labourers’ liberty to cut rushes at Xmas and not after Candlemas’.” A must read! “It was a form of moral respect that took the trouble to itemize the precariousness of others’ lives and to appreciate the kinds of courage and endurance needed to sustain them.” Written in a review by another historian, Stefan Collini, that is perfection in a sentence.
Because I will also be scouring the notes for more book suggestions, I can predict that Kynaston will influence my winter reading, as he has done several times before. And after some time has passed, I will start hopefully searching for when the publication date of his next book might be. Meanwhile, I have ordered the first book of his history of London series.
One of your previous recommendations, “Admissions,” by Henry Marsh, similarly exposed cracks in the British medical system in recent decades. We Americans would do well to read more about what is happening in Britain. We must shine a light on our own failings, as I believe we are on the same decline. It sounds like Kyneston also has much to tell us. I will be adding his titles to my list of holds at the library. What is that quote, those who don’t know their own history are condemned to repeat it?
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In Canada our “free” public health system is falling apart. For example when Skyler had her recent bout of vertigo, she was able to access a variety of tests and scans in a fairly timely manner. With similar symptoms, I was never allowed the same testing here as not only do we ration our free healthcare, we have outlawed the ability to pay for it privately.
My province is now sending cancer patients to Washington State for radiation treatment because we do not have the equipment
nor staff to even provide cancer care on a timely basis! The ability to see a specialist and cancer surgery waitlists have tumbled past their best before dates.
Canada is now a world pioneer in medical assisted death, or MAID as we call it. The ability to ask to be terminated. Most any sort of suffering qualifies you. Including pain from the surgeries you are waitlisted forever to receive.
I know the US has failings especially pertaining to cost, but the solution is not Canada’s public health care system either.
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That is heartbreaking. I hate to have to travel for health care. Here so many people can’t afford health care at all. I always hoped Canada’s and the UK’s system would be a success.
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I had to get his previous books via interlibrary loan. Now I just can’t wait and have to order each new one from the U.K.!
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You do not have to look far here to see examples of the razing of community life, in the name of better housing. It is the tent cities, under bridges and in parks, with their communal kitchen canopies and fire circles that attract the homeless, the addicted, and the addled. And the lonely.
We take the tents and ramshackle shelters down, provide housing alternatives, but in a week many are drawn back and community builds again.
Will written history be kind with sepia images and thoughtful words, or will the undercurrent of prey and predator harden our hearts, or wilfully blind us to sad and moving stories.
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Here is the same. Not as much as in the city but there are camps in the woods and people homeless in the tourist towns. We haven’t torn down neighborhoods but prices have gone up along with the number of vacation rentals so much that working class people can’t afford to rent.
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What a fantastic book! I love how things are pieced together. Do you know if there any books about the United States that are put together like this. Heartbreaking to read about the demolition of those little bungalows. What. The. Heck.
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I’ve never run across a historian who uses as much material from “ordinary people” but would love to read more like that about any country.
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Which Kynaston would you recommend reading first?
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