Events, Dear Boy, Events

A Political Diary of Britain 1921-2010

Ruth Winstone

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781846684333
• eBook ISBN: 9781847654632
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Ruth Winstone retells Britain's history through the great diarists of the last century, drawing back the curtain on the lives of political classes, their doubts, ambitions, and emotions. She moves deftly among those in the thick of it, showing the elation, anger, doubts, jealousy, joys and fears of people as they record their own and the nation's triumphs and disasters. To this potent mix she adds the mordant perceptions of observers like Virginia Woolf, Cecil Beaton, Peter Hall and Roy Strong, and the vivid records of everyday life found in the diaries of otherwise ordinary men and women. Events, Dear Boy, Events reveals Britain's recent past in the words of the actors who were shaping the events of the day. This is living real-time history.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One 1921–1931 The Internecine Years
• Chapter Two 1932–1940 Belling the Cat
• Chapter Three 1940–1945 Even to the End
• Chapter Four 1945–1951 A Beam of Wickedness and Unrest
• Chapter Five 1951–1962 The Baby Boomers
• Chapter Six 1963–1972 Sexual Politics
• Chapter Seven 1973–1982 Who Governs Britain?
• Chapter Eight 1982–1990 Civil War
• Chapter Nine 1990–1997 The Lady across the Water
• Chapter Ten 1997–2007 Ultimately he blew it
• Postscript 2007–2010 Killing the Goose with the Golden Eggs
• The Diarists
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Footnotes