Category: Long listsTTTT

The groundbreaking series that will tell the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the coming of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 as never before.

Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices – vivid, unselfconscious, and unaware of what the future holds. A Chingford housewife endures the tribulations of rationing; a retired schoolteacher observes during a royal visit how well-fed the Queen looks; a pernickety civil servant in Bristol is oblivious to anyone’s troubles but his own. An array of working-class witnesses describe how life in post-war Britain is, with little regard for liberal niceties or the feelings of their ‘betters’.

Many of these voices will stay with the reader in future volumes, jostling alongside well-known figures like John Arlott (here making his first radio broadcast, still in police uniform), Glenda Jackson (taking the 11+) and Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling poverty of postwar Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, the first volume of David Kynaston’s ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.

• David Kynaston, ‘Family Britain 1951-7’ and in conversation with D. J. Taylor, Writers-in-Schools pilot at Norwich School 2010
• David Kynaston at Kingston University, London

The partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political and religious freedom – through the liberation of India from British rule, and the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan. In reality the geographical divide effected an even greater schism of the population, benefiting the few at the expense of the very many, exposing huge numbers of the population to desperate and devastating consequences. Thousands of women were raped, at least one million people were killed, and ten- to fifteen-times that number were forced to leave their homes as refugees. It was one of the first, the most bloody, and remains one of the most significant, events of decolonisation in the twentieth century.

In The Great Partition, Yasmin Khan examines the context, execution and aftermath of partition, integrating an incisive knowledge of political manoeuvres with a deeply-felt understanding of their fundamental social and cultural consequences. She exposes the obliviousness of the small elite driving division, as well as the majority of activists on both sides, to what partition would entail in practice and its effects on the populace. Its repercussions still resound today.Published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of partition, Yasmin Khan’s personal account draws together a fresh and considerable body of research, including many new interviews, newspaper extracts and archival sources, to reappraise independence and division and reinforce its catastrophic human cost. Intelligent, terrifying, wise and timely, The Great Partition is a testament to a country and people who were brutally and recklessly ripped apart.

• Yasmin Khan at Royal Holloway, University of London

From 1970, things were changing in Ireland – the Celtic Tiger had finally woken, and the rules for everything from gender roles and religion to international relations were being entirely rewritten.

Luck and the Irish examines how the country has weathered these last thirty years of change, and what these changes may mean in the long run. R. F. Foster also looks at how characters as diverse as Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson, Charles Haughey and Bob Geldof have contributed to Ireland’s altered psyche, and uncovers some of the scandals, corruption and marketing masterminds that have transformed Ireland – and its luck.

• Roy Foster at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Drawing on a huge range of sources – letters, memoirs, conversations – Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers – whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends – or to inform on them.

• Orlando Figes’ website

The Blair Years is the most compelling and revealing account of contemporary politics you will ever read. Taken from Alastair Campbell’s daily diaries, it charts the rise of New Labour and the tumultuous years of Tony Blair’s leadership, providing the first important record of a remarkable decade in our national life.

Here are the defining events of our time, from Labour’s new dawn to the war on terror, from the death of Diana to negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, through to the Hutton Inquiry of 2003, the year Campbell resigned his position at No 10. But above all here is Tony Blair up close and personal, taking the decisions that affected the lives of millions, under relentless and often hostile pressure.

Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain, Alastair Campbell is no stranger to controversy. Feared and admired in equal measure, hated by some, he was pivotal to the founding of New Labour and the sensational election victory of 1997. As Blair’s press secretary, strategist and trusted confidant, Campbell spent more waking hours alongside the Prime Minister than anyone. His diaires – at times brutally frank, often funny, always compelling – take the reader right to the heart of government.

The Blair Years is a story of politics in the raw, of progress and setback, of reputations made and destroyed, under the relentless scrutiny of a 24-hour media. Unflinchingly told, it covers the crises and scandals, the rows and resignations, the ups and downs of Britain’s hothouse politics. But amid the big events are insights and observations that make this a remarkably human portrayal of some of the most powerful people in the world.

There has never been so riveting a book about life at the very top, nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.

• Alastair Campbell and Tony Benn, ‘Political Diarists on Political Diaries’ at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2008
• The Blair Years website
• Alastair Campbell’s website
• Alastair Campbell on Twitter

Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomised the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent – from colonial cruelty under the Belgians to the kleptocratic chaos of Mobutu Sese Seko and the current post-apocalyptic riot of robber-baron politicians. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. He remembered his mother’s stories of her own genteel river journey there in the 1950s and his connection deepened when he discovered that Stanley’s expedition was funded by the Telegraph. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition – but travelling alone.

Despite warnings from old Africa hands that his plan was ‘suicidal’, Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. He travelled for hundreds of kilometers on a motorbike, dogged by punctured tyres, broken bridges and dehydration. As he drove through the most dangerous areas, he stopped only to sleep – biking through the bush for hours and speeding up every time he passed a soldier. And then he reached the legendary Congo River, making his way down it in an assortment of vessels including a dugout canoe. Helped along the way by a cast of characters – from UN aid workers to a campaigning pygmy, he passed through the once thriving cities of this huge country, saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule, and followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers, and of the visitors – such as Katherine Hepburn and Evelyn Waugh – who had been there in very different times. Almost 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean a thinner and a wiser man.

His extraordinary account describes a country with more past than present, where giant steamboats lie rotting in the advancing forest and children hear stories from their grandfathers of days when cars once drove by. Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still.

• Blood River website
• Tim Butcher on Journalisted

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and spent his early years there, before being sent, aged six, to England, a desperately unhappy experience. Charles Allen’s great-grandfather brought the sixteen-year-old Kipling out to Lahore to work on The Civil and Military Gazette with the words ‘Kipling will do’, and thus set young Rudyard on his literary course. And so it was that at the start of the cold weather of 1882 he stepped ashore at Bombay on 18 October 1882 – ‘a prince entering his kingdom’. He stayed for seven years during which he wrote the work that established him as a popular and critical, sometimes controversial, success.

Charles Allen has written a brilliant account of those years – of an Indian childhood and coming of age, of abandonment in England, of family and Empire. He traces the Indian experiences of Kipling’s parents, Lockwood and Alice and reveals what kind of culture the young writer was born into and then returned to when still a teenager. It is a work of fantastic sympathy for a man – though not blind to Kipling’s failings – and the country he loved.

‘And another thing…’ is intended as my outlet for opinions, jokes, musings and whimsy about a range of subjects including – but not only – politics. If you believe that politicians take themselves too seriously, you might enjoy it. If you think they should take themselves very seriously indeed, or shouldn’t have any interests outside politics, I would avoid it, frankly. Try John Redwood.

I’ve been a Labour MP since 2001, and was a minister at the Department for Transport from September 2006 until October 2008. I’m married to Carolyn, with whom I have two sons.

I have a number of obsessions interests, including Doctor Who, science fiction in general, the music of Genesis, The X-Factor and any other old rubbish that comes into my head.

Submitted blogposts

• Why I’ll vote for 42 days
• Heaven knows we’re miserable now
• In praise of McDonald’s
• ‘David’ feels our pain – live as it happens
• The call
• The modern dilemma
• An Orwellian nightmare? Oh, wake up!
• How to save the Post Office
• No title
• Words of wisdom

Other links

• And another thing…
• Tom Harris MP on Twitter

Confined by Lucifer to one of the lower circles of Hell, the Heresiarch nevertheless continues to campaign against all forms of orthodoxy.

Submitted blogposts

• A Touch of Harry
• Labour and the lager louts
• All that Jazz
• Everything I’ve Learned about Spanking
• Christians for Darwin
• Diabolically Clever
• Iraq – what really happened
• Icon of Evil
• Dacre v Eady
• Obama’s World

Other links

• Heresy Corner

Oliver Kamm is a leader writer at The Times. He joined in 2008, having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund. He is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy (2005).

Submitted blogposts

• Our policy in Iraq (£)
• Powell’s prophecies (£)
• Preventing nuclear terrorism (£)
• Methods of genocide denial (£)
• Ten moments from Tony Benn (£)
• Palin and Creationism, again (£)
• “Crumbling capitalism” – not (£)
• How it happened
• Recalling Baader-Meinhof (£)
• Dealing with the financial crisis (£)

Other links

• Oliver Kamm’s blog
• Oliver Kamm on Journalisted
• Oliver Kamm on Twitter

The Bleeding Heart Show is a blog of under-rehearsed and over-caffeinated stammerings from Neil Robertson, a Barnsley-born 25-year-old who now resides in Coventry.

From time to time, the blog will contain ill-informed missives on British/American politics, popular culture and other miscellaneous outbursts which only ever make sense to the author. The blog is written from a liberal-left perspective and covers such emotive subjects as (yawn) electoral reform, social issues, the maddening rightwards lurches of the Labour Party and the need to revitalise grassroots political activism… occasionally interspersed with cool Youtube videos and pop songs. When he’s not busy inflicting his words on his nearest and dearest, the blogger can also be found indulging in a liberal conspiracy. Don’t worry, it sounds worse than it is.

The blog is named after a song by a Canadian band called the New Pornographers.

Submitted blogposts

• The Brown Stuff
• Finding Shannon Matthews – so much for ‘broken Britain’
• The war on kindness
• The spite dripping from dreaming spires
• Give prisoners the right to vote
• Restoring dignity for asylum seekers
• Burning up
• Barack Obama & the tragedy of the Muslim ’smear’
• On poverty and terror
• High Hopes & Low Expectations – reflections on a home town

Other links

• The Bleeding Heart Show
• Neil Robertson at Liberal Conspiracy

Since 2004 I have been BBC News’ home editor, a title which has some strange consequences. I get sent samples of “premium quality laminate floor-coverings”. I have been asked to review hammer drills. And offer opinions on Italian furniture design.

But my interest and certainly my expertise is not in the world of interiors. In a way, it is quite the reverse. I try to look at Britain from outside, endeavouring to make sense of the dramatic and rapid change affecting the UK by standing well back.

My title also implies a role as head of the BBC’s UK Specialist Unit – a team of expert journalists working in radio, television and online. Thankfully, any responsibility in that regard does not extend to trying to manage the unit but I do champion its cause at every opportunity.

It is the quality of the BBC’s specialist journalism that sets its news coverage apart and I believe we have some of the best in the world keeping tabs on the domestic scene.
What I want to do, (and what this blog is really about), is join some of the dots left by the dozens of stories we report each day. I want to understand our country, to see which direction we are heading in and what challenges lie ahead on our journey.

Submitted blogposts

• The end of certainty
• Boom town in midst of looming recession
• The war on drugs
• Celebrating the knife
• Spotting a sociopath
• The problem that’s hanging around
• Obama – Tiger, Lewis and me
• One law for the rich…
• Crime: Lies and statistics
• Drug treatment – success or failure?

Other links

• Mark Easton’s UK
• Mark Easton on Journalisted