We Danced All Night

Bounded by the Great War on one side and by the looming shadow of the Second World War on the other, the inter-war era boasts a coherent identity enjoyed by few other twenty-year periods. It was in these decades that so many of the iconic characters of modern Britain acquired their personas; but this social history sets them in unexpected contexts: Winston Churchill and Siegfried Sassoon as errant motorists, Barbara Cartland and Agatha Christie as resolute divorcees, Lady Diana Cooper as cash-strapped film star. This new account departs from the traditional perspective on inter-war Britain as an era dominated by mass unemployment, class conflict and poverty by reflecting modern research on rising real incomes, improvements in diet and health, and the spread of cheap luxuries. It vividly depicts how the British people reacted to the privations of wartime by their determination to indulge in leisure and entertainment of all kinds.It also corrects the view of contemporary critics who saw British society as undisciplined, irresponsible and criminal: in these decades the great Victorian vices - prostitution and drunkenness - were in steep decline, while the prison population stood at just 11,000. Martin Pugh also evaluates the extent of regional culture and loyalties between the wars, and examines the development of nationalism in Scotland, Wales, and Great Britain as a whole. Above all he explains how our modern consumer society of dedicated shoppers effectively took shape during the 1930s, as well as the modern British obsession with housing and home-ownership.

ISBN 0224076981   Pages 512 ISBN13 9780224076982 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 970 Publisher Vintage   Published in London Imprint The Bodley Head Ltd   Height (mm) 239 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 160 Publication date 03 Jul 2008   Spine width (mm) 45 DEWEY 941.083   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

1		'Will never really came home': The Impact of the Great War		1
2		'A Babylonian touch': British Food Between the Wars		20
3		'Mr Can and Mr Can't': Health and Medicine		38
4		'Where the air's like wine': The Origins of the Property-Owning Democracy		57
5		Wigan Pier Revisited: Work, Unemployment and Class Conflict		76
6		Screwneck Webb and Jimmy Spinks: Crime, Violence and the Police		102
7		'The Best Job of All': Marriage and Divorce		124
8		'Abnormalities of the brain': Sex, Sexuality and Gender Confusion		149
9		'Keep Young and Beautiful': Women, Domesticity and Feminism		171
10		'The mills were our destiny': Childhood, Youth and Education		193
11		'Reminiscent of Negro orgies': Leisure Between the Wars		216
12		Yellow Earl and Silver Ghost: Motoring and Interwar Society		239
13		'Cider With Rosie': The Countryside Between the Wars		260
14		'Six penn'orth of hope': Sport and Gambling		282
15		'Wings over Everest': The Romance and the Menace of Aviation		302
16		'A talent to amuse': British Cultural Life		326
17		'Brideshead Revisited': The Decline of the Aristocracy		346
18		'Everybody calls him Bertie': The Monarchy and the British People		364
19		A Stone's Throw to Australia': Patriotism, Race and Empire		390
20		'No longer part of England': Regions and Nations in Interwar Britain		413
21		'Ask Your Father': From War to War		439
		Notes		447
		Bibliography		469
		More...

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