Never Had It So Good

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What to expect

'A rich treasure-chest of a book' ANTHONY HOWARD, Sunday Telegraph

'A spectacular history of the sixties' NICK COHEN, Observer

'Sandbrook's book is a pleasure to read ... he is a master of the human touch' RICHARD DAVENPORT-HINES, TLS

'Rivetingly readable' GODFREY SMITH, Sunday Times

From the bloodshed of the Suez Crisis to the giddy heyday of Beatlemania, from the first night of Look Back in Anger to the sensational revelations of the Profumo scandal, British life during the late 1950s and early 1960s seemed more colourful, exciting and controversial than ever. Using a vast array of sources, Dominic Sandbrook tells the story of a society caught between cultural nostalgia and economic optimism. He brings to life the post-war experience for a new generation of readers, in a critically acclaimed debut that will change for ever how we think about the sixties.

Critics Review

The first volume of Dominic Sandbrook's spectacular history of the Sixties is a chronicle of how the realisation of irreversible national decline hit the British after the Suez crisis... It is a tribute to Sandbrook's literary skill that his scholarship is never oppressive. Alternatively delightful and enlightening, he has produced a book which must have been an enormous labour to write but is a treat to read
Observer
This is a rich treasure-chest of a book... Sandbrook possesses enough verve and self-confidence to have produced an outstanding example of the genre... a tour de force
Sunday Telegraph
There is much to be enjoyed and admired here. Sandbrook writes lucidly and with brio... I find myself in awe of Sandbrook's apparent breadth and depth of reading, and his enthusiasm
Spectator
Compelling ... a richly detailed and deeply atmospheric book
Telegraph
Brilliant... with a novelist's skill, [Sandbrook] picks his way through the unfolding drama... As a popular, very readable history, this is a massive compendium of quiet, thoughtful information, occasionally punctuated with some very funny anecdotes
Daily Mail
Sandbrook has a winning style - not too flashy, but always ready with a killer observation. His judgements are cool and self-assured, his wry wit ever-present but unobtrusive. Above all, he moves effortlessly from the particular to the general and back again, dazzling the reader with peculiar but telling facts, offering tart vignettes of politicians and cultural standard bearers, and demonstrating the extraordinary range of his reading. You should read this remarkable history of a much misunderstood era for both its immense sweep and the piquancy of its detail
Sunday Express
A wonderful book - a most accomplished, readable and convincing tour through seven years from Suez to Beatlemania. It is refreshing because it probes beneath the surface of events, dissolving many of the myths of the sixties and suggesting, quite rightly, that this was a period of uneven and gradual change rather than a revolution
Lawrence James
A clever and engaging study of Britain as it prepared to swing into the sixties. Never Had It So Good is very good indeed
Amanda Foreman
Refreshing and full of insight. Reading this book is effortless - rather like being pulled down a meandering river in a comfortable boat on a sunny day
Scotland on Sunday
Entertaining and always engaging, with a lovely narrative flow that carries the reader easily through its hundreds of pages
Mail on Sunday
A masterpiece of diligence. And Sandbrook has distilled it into a sharp and fluent prose that swirls elegantly from episode to episode
New Statesman
Brilliantly written... a great book for the general reader, and an ideal revision text for the bright undergraduate studying all of twentieth-century British history
History Today
An astonishing range of material... immensely readable... a vivid picture of a nation at a time of unsettling and rapid change. There are bound to be many more books on the 1960s, but few will be as well structured, well written or intelligent as this
Country Life
Sandbrook's tour of this turn-of-the-decade is rich and fair... For the general public, he's done a favour: this is a book which does justice to complexity and to contradictions, and that's worth a lot of scholarly essays
Glasgow Herald
A rivetingly readable debut ... What I shall cherish this whopping book for, above all, are its unforgettable vignettes ... Sandbrook has found the hinge on which our history in the 20th century will swing
Sunday Times
Accomplishes for the television age what Barbara Tuchman achieved for the fourteenth century ... A highly readable history ... Sandbrook's narrative is reliably fluent, amusing and confident
Times Literary Supplement
A vast and wide-ranging history ... a thought-provoking survey of the transitional years between the Old Britain and the New
Waterstone's Book Quarterly
A most readable and persuasive chronicle ... I recommend the book to anyone wishing to revive, or perhaps correct, his memories, and to anyone too young to have such memories who is curious to know what all the fuss was about
Oldie
Splendid ... rife with revealing detail
Policy Review

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