“Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles”, by Dominic Sandbrook

928 pages, Abacus/Little, Brown UK, ISBN-13: 978-0349115306

Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles by Dominic Sandbrook is, in a word, brilliant. So, just what was it really like on that sceptred isle half a century ago? For Yanks like me, Britain during this time comes down to The Beatles and tea; but there was, or course, so much more to that earth of majesty between 1956 and 1963. The Suez War, smack-dab in the middle of the 50s, marked a significant national milestone and one with which Sandbrook chooses to begin his magisterial study of this other Eden. The title comes from Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s perhaps most famous phrase – “[l]et us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good” – for which he and was widely accused of taking a complacent attitude towards the consumer society, then roaring along. In retrospect, his term as prime minister – from January 10^th, 1957 to October 18^th, 1963 – is seen by many as a benign era, comparable with the Eisenhower years in the States which partially overlap this time, which are remembered by Americans as a golden era before the Kennedy Assassination and the upheavals of the 60’s.

The eight years covered by Sandbrook were riotous and fluctuating, but for all that the author has managed to hold onto a theme of sorts, that “[t]he yearning for an alternative to the old-fashioned, complacent Conservatives who were thought to be running the country into the ground”. The revolt of the early 60s against the old Tory order was more social rather than political, with the mood being articulated by TV shows like “Beyond the Fringe” and “That Was the Week That Was”, or the magazine “Private Eye”. The mood wasn’t so much a desire to change the system – certainly not to burn it all down – but rather to open it up to more people. As a proper historian, Sandbrook avoids drawing modern parallels, but the reader can’t avoid being struck by the cunning of history. With the Tories gone, the 60s were meant to end elitism and bring a meritocracy; instead, they cleared the road for a new elite which sustains itself in power by insisting it is against the establishment and an education system which makes it all but impossible for bright working-class children to get on (sounds familiar don’t it, Yanks?).

There are hundreds of killer quotes and anecdotes in Never Had It So Good. Colin Wilson (whose demented claims to be the “major literary genius of our century” were taken seriously by literary London for a year or so – oh, never heard of him? Don’t fret about it, son), fell from grace when the father of his girlfriend burst into his flat with a horsewhip crying, “Aha, Wilson, the game is up! We know what’s in your filthy diary!” and forced Wilson to hand his mucky and grandiose ramblings to the Daily Mail. When Selwyn Lloyd was offered a post at the Foreign Office by Churchill, he replied: “But, sir, there must be some mistake. Except in war, I have never visited any foreign country. I do not like foreigners. I have never spoken in any foreign-affairs debate in the House. I have never listened to one”, to which Churchill replied, “Young man, these all seem to me to be positive advantages”. While dense with detail and overloaded with oratory, Never Had It So Good is never, ever boring as it tells the tale of Britain in this traumatic time of change and adaptation. Again, in a word, brilliant.