David Kynaston 'A Northern Wind: Britain 1962 - 65'

A Northern Wind

How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors.

A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston’s acclaimed ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston’s masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill – while simultaneously revealing in all their variety the experiences and stories of the everyday people living through this history.

Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC’s controversial ‘That Was The Week That Was’; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham’s Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional and immersive, ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ has transformed how we see and understand post-war Britain. A Northern Wind continues the journey.

David Kynaston

David Kynaston is an English historian specialising in the social history of England. In 2007 Kynaston published Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 to much acclaim. The title consists of two books that together make the first volume in a projected series of six entitled Tales of a New Jerusalem. In this series Kynaston intends to chronicle the history of Great Britain from the end of World War II to the ascension of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Austerity Britain was named "Book of the Decade" by The Sunday Times.

Family Britain (2010) is the second volume in the series, and was also released as two books. It covers the period from 1951 to the Suez crisis of 1956. The volume was serialised on BBC Radio 4 as its Book of the Week for 23 November 2009, read by Dominic West. The third volume, Modernity Britain, covering the years 1957–59, was published in June 2013.

This event is part of the 'Blackwell's Inspired Festival' and is free to attend.

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