Family Britain: 1951-1957
By David Kynaston
Bloomsbury £25, 776 pages
FT Bookshop price: £20

Not so long ago the fashion was for history books to encompass the “long 18th” (or 17th or 19th) century. A vogue followed for slicing the past into ­decades, then even smaller units, with Peter Hennessey’s histories of post-war Britain and David Kynaston’s Tales of a New Jerusalem . The second volume of Kynaston’s work, Family Britain, covers just six years, 1951 to 1957, and takes nearly 800 pages to do so. It is a history not of grand designs and sweeping brush-strokes but of delving and patient probing. And what riches it nets.

In his first volume, Kynaston wrote about austerity. Family Britain picks up the story from that period to “booming buoyant, Britain”, in the words of the News Chronicle in 1955. Yet only 8 per cent of homes had a fridge, while journalist peer Wayland Young noted on his return to Wigan Pier 20 years after George Orwell had visited, that the town had “changed from barefoot malnutrition to nylon and television”. Evocative names such as Dab-it-off, Windolene, Spangles, I-Spy books, Toni perms, premium bonds, Green Line coaches, Tizer, Plasticine, The Glums and Kraft cheese triangles recur in a narrative shot through with sharp insights and thoughtful reflections.

The canvas is filled in by an amazing range of sources, some published, many not. Hundreds of voices bear witness to events, from Westminster politicians and Whitehall civil servants to bus drivers, farm labourers, insurance agents and a collection of beady-eyed housewives. The familiar landmarks are there but the angle of vision has been altered. The 1951 Festival of Britain is seen not from the eyrie of the planners but from visitors, such as the local government official who found “the entire contents of the dimly-lit Dome of Discovery ... of no interest to me at all ... the whole evening scarcely seemed worth the 6/6 it cost me.” The end of rationing in 1954 is marked not just by the mass tearing-up of ration books in Trafalgar Square, but by a procession to a bonfire in Heathfield, Sussex, headed by the local undertaker.

Many of those who peopled Austerity Britain return – from the highly strung Anthony Eden, who has just left 10 Downing Street when this book ends, to the warm-hearted Judy Haines of Chingford, Essex. There is particular pleasure in reading about the early experiences of the unknown then and well-known now: David Jones (now Bowie) was so scared at primary school that he peed on the floor; 24-year-old Shirley Catlin (now Williams) considered “giving up politics altogether” during her first campaign for parliament.

Since this is history of a high order, Family Britain is not simply a string of fascinating vignettes. Kynaston listens to his huge cast of voices and carefully interrogates their observations. He dissects the ways in which Britain was still a deeply class-ridden society – the year 1955 saw the publication of Nancy Mitford’s prescriptive, supposed-to-be-amusing guide to the U and Non U. He attempts to unravel what “community” meant to people then; the chapter title, “I Never Asked Her In”, suggests that this was rarely the easy-going society we like to imagine.

Family Britain sounds cosy and safe, the sort of place modern day politicians are apt to recommend a return to, with family evenings spent round the newly acquired TV, or teaching the budgie to talk. But Kynaston also points up the dark side of stasis and insularity: a largely white and male-dominated country that could be cruel to miscreants and children, and pickily critical, puritanical and mean-spirited about new ideas, unconventional behaviour and incoming peoples. Family Britain is evidence that Our Island Story is being unfolded more fully and more humanely than ever before.

Juliet Gardiner is the author of ‘The Thirties: An Intimate History’ to be published by Harper Press in February 2010