Worth saying right at the start of this post that the full title of this book by Juliet Gardiner is The Thirties: an Intimate History. If you are looking for a political polemic, though it lurks in the background, you will not find it here. It slots into the category of social and personal history, the kind I like, the kind I enjoyed in Demobbed by Alan Allport which I reviewed a few months ago. The history of daily life, events and those involved.
First thing to say is that this book is huge. It is nearly 1,000 pages so it is very long and far too much to take in all at once, hence the time it has been on my Current Reading list. I kept dipping into it a chapter at a time - read it straight through and you risk historical indigestion, a nibble here and there is much more enjoyable. The quality of writing and the staggering amount of research which has gone into this takes
one's breath away - I am full of admiration for anybody who can write a book, any book, but my mind boggles at the hard graft that has gone into The Thirties and which has produced such an outstanding work. One review says "From architecture to the
abdication, from zeppelins to zoos, it is comfortably the definitive
account
of a decade that has been much maligned, but which now looks like the
crucible in which modern Britain was born" which sums it up beautifully and much more succinctly than I am able to do.
It would be impossible for this reviewer to cover everything that I have read so I have picked out one plum, one section which I hunted out almost immediately and this was the fact that in 1936 England had three kings, George V, Edward VII and George VI.
I have always found the Abdication Crisis totally fascinating and since I was a teenager I have read just about every book or diary I could lay my hand on covering this period so wanted to see Juliet Gardiner's take on Edward and Mrs Simpson. I found nothing in this book which in any way made me change my opinion of this venal, lazy, selfish little man and his ghastly wife. The Duke of Windsor left his country without a backward look after managing to secure highly advantageous financial arrangements for his future, thought he could go into exile for a few years and then come back, thought he could 'manage Bertie' now the King, and seemed to have no idea of how his behaviour and actions appeared to the rest of the world. "We loved him. We would have drawn swords for him and then God, didn't he let us down" this from an officer in the Royal Fusiliers of which Edward had been Colonel in Chief. Another quote "the more one hears what really took place behind the scenes, the more thankful is that he decided to go - he was a dual personality, a mixture of much that was good and charming with much that was so rotten and unstable". Whilst the author presents the facts and tries hard not to let her opinions hold sway throughout this book, this reader feels that she was not exactly one of the Duke of Windsor's fans.
Juliet Gardiner's marvellous book covers the rise of fascism and communism, chapters on football pools, cricket and greyhound racing, nightclubs, unemployment and the shadow of war. It is immensely readable, reminded me in its accessibility and style of The Victorians by A N Wilson, another eminently absorbing book. These are not academic scholarly histories, but there is no lack of scholarship involved in their writing and they are engaging without talking down to a reader who may have no historical background at all.
A few years ago I heard Juliet Gardiner speak about her then book, Life in Britain during the Second World War, and her enthusiasm and zest for her subject made me purchase a copy - I found the same enjoyment in her writing now as I did then. Don't let the length of this book deter you from obtaining a copy, you have pages and pages of delight and interest to look forward to.
"In a book replete with treasures, everyone will find a special jewel" says the Times Literary Supplement.
They are right.
