Age of Austerity: 1945-1951

Penguin Books, 1964
 

Extraordinary as it may seem to older people, a generation is already growing up for whom the post-war years of austerity are something between a dim memory and a blank patch. These were the years of spivs and snoek, of priorities and planning; of Labour's triumph in 1945 and the creation of the Welfare State; of the Ground-Nuts Scheme and the Lynskey Tribunal; of the New Look and verse drama; of squatters and the Steel Debates; of the partition of India and the Festival of Britain - a period so varied and eventful that Austerity, like Affluence, seems inadequate even as a label. The fifteen contributors to this book were all at school when the Attlee epoch began - impressionable enough to recapture brilliantly the atmosphere of those years. Digging deeply into the texture of the times they have come up with a series of flashbacks which have some of the magnetic appeal of old newsreels.