I wanted to read this book as it describes post-war Britain through a compilation of testimony from all sorts of publications. The author has scoured newspapers, journals, books, diaries and many other sources, all meticulously listed in twenty pages of tiny print at the end. I was born the year before the book starts on VE Day in May 1945 and I wanted to know how my parents lived during those first few years of my life. Dad was back from the war in 1945, having missed my birth. He shared a room with my mother and me in my grandmothers' council house in Rotherham. It was two buses for him to work at Davy's in Sheffield. There is a photo in the book of The Haymarket in Sheffield in 1946. But if I could find something particular about their lives, I was sadly disappointed. Despite the wealth of detail, there was little I found in that respect. As the following notes I made tend to show.
Among all the celebrations of the end of the war in Europe was the Home Services' "Tribute to the King". We hear the "not yet unmistakable voice of John Arlott, then an acting patrol sergeant, starting to get some radio work". There were long queues at the cinemas. The art deco Hammersmith Gaumont (now the Eventim Appollo) had a Hammond Organ. Here was the Gaumont Palace Symphony Orchestra taking the same stage as those bands I saw many years later. Winston Churchill calling a general election on 5th July 1945 after disbanding the wartime coalition. A boxing match for the British and Empire Heavyweight title saw a crowd of 27,000 at White Hart Lane. The crushes at post war football matches were terrible. Thirty three died at Bolton's Burndon Park. How many others?
Dance halls were heaving, theatres booked out, queues at cinemas and huge listening audiences for radio shows. But shops had very poor stock, rationing was awful. (It must have been that my father worked in a grocers that there was always food on the table at home.) Everything was so scarce, even worse than during the war. Bread rationing came in in June 1946 when it had never been rationed in wartime. I can remember ration books which did not disappear until 1952. Tennessee Williams on a visit wrote "I guess England is the most unpleasant, uncomfortable and expensive place in the world right now".
But in September 1946, "Have a Go" started with Wilfred Pickles. A radio show that I can remember. And the next month came "Woman's Hour". The Third Programme started in the September with the BBC thinking it might replace the Light Programme. No chance. We hear about the American Anglo Loan of £3.75 Billion that was only finally paid off in 2006! A bill in parliament to bring in the NHS, then social security with the National Insurance Act. The first TV's were on sale in 1946, but we only got ours for the coronation in 1952. The black market was in full swing. In April 1947 a new star appeared in the theatre. Norman Wisdom performed in mainly one man show at the London Casino (that he learnt during his time in the army). The highest ever football league attendance (83,360) came at Maine Road in Manchester for a Man Utd game! We end with the formation of the NHS in 1948. But I had dodged all the political stuff.
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