'The most entertaining historian alive' SPECTATOR
'Addictively readable' DOMINIC SANDBROOK, SUNDAY TIMES

A definitive portrait of Britain in the heady throes of the Swinging Sixties, from legendary historian David Kynaston.

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.

This was a time of looking both backwards and forwards – sweeping reforms to secondary education, huge swathes of urban redevelopment, and the irresistible rise of a confident, free-spending youth culture. Yet everyday life for many, especially beyond the big cities, bore striking resemblance to decades earlier.

Covering the short but intense period from after Churchill’s death in early 1965 to England’s Wembley triumph in July 1966, David Kynaston uses a plethora of contemporary sources, including diaries of ordinary people, to paint a richly nuanced picture of unrivalled detail. Deep Into the Sixties continues to revolutionise how we see post-war Britain.

The most humane and even-handed chronicler of our time * Guardian *
Magnificent . . . The early Sixties have never been recounted so well * The Times, Books of the Year *

David Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written nineteen critically acclaimed books. His continuing history of post-war Britain, ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’, has so far comprised Austerity Britain, Family Britain, Modernity Britain, On the Cusp and A Northern Wind. He has also written several books on aspects of cricket history including the award-winning Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket (with Stephen Fay) and Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes (with Harry Ricketts).