Showing results by author "David Kynaston" in All Categories

How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston’s acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965.

It’s the heart of the Sixties in Britain – the Beatles and the Stones vie at the top of the charts, England win the World Cup, and optimism and patriotism percolate through the streets. But this is not the full story of mid-Sixties Britain. Disaffection on the political left increasingly focuses on the escalating Vietnam War; and the ambitious hopes of Harold Wilson’s Labour government start to founder on the parlous state of the pound.

Arlott and Swanton typified the contrasting aspects of post-war Britain. Because of their strong personalities and distinctive voices – Swanton's crisp and upper-class, Arlott's with its Hampshire burr – each had a loyal following. As England moved from a class-based to a more egalitarian society, nothing stayed the same – including professional cricket. Wise, lively and filled with rich social and sporting history, Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket shows how, as the game entered a new era, these two very different men battled to save the soul of the game.

Britain's private, fee-paying schools are institutions where children from affluent families have their privileges further entrenched through a high-quality, richly resourced education. There is an irrefutable link between private schools and life's gilded path: private school to top university to top career. Engines of Privilege contends that, in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity, fairness and social cohesion, the educational apartheid separating private and state schools deploys our national educational resources unfairly and inefficiently.