Winds of Change

Harold Macmillan - the presiding figure in Peter Hennessy's magnificent new history - famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to wipe away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a third world war. As with his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good , Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy.