sections:
The suffragettes outraged Victorian society, yet behind the This new social history recounts the story of how, in the face of severe material hardships, social divisions, moral and political controversies, the British people retreated cheerfully into a lifestyle dominated by marriage, home and family, enjoyed a boom in consumption and popular entertainment, and remained a stable and cohesive society throughout the period.
Bounded by the Great War on one side and the Second World War on the other, the inter-war era boasts a coherent identity enjoyed by few twenty-years periods of history. The exuberance and self-indulgence of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ stand in stark contrast to the pessimism engendered by the ‘Lost Generation’ and the looming prospect of another European war. Part of the fascination lies in the fact that it was during these decades that many of the iconic British characters of the twentieth century acquired their personas from the Queen Mother to Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, Gracie Fields, Sir John Reith and Barbara Cartland.
This new examination of inter-war Britain will follow the evolution of many of the enduring features of our society that we now take for granted:
* a quiet revolution was effected by millions of couples determined to reduce the size of their families
* home-ownership became a realistic goal for a majority of the people
* the motor-car began to occupy its central place in the social and economic life of the country
* the BBC acquired its role as a vehicle for unifying the nation at moments of triumph and tragedy
* electricity entered the homes of almost the entire population
* the rapid development of civil and military aviation offered British men a new and romantic way of serving their country
* British women – citizens for the first time – explored new strategies for combining domesticity with employment rather than choosing between them
book reviews
- TLS
“A wide-ranging study of a fascinating period, We Danced All Night is also a good reference book…vividly evokes a time when tinned and processed food was really quite the thing…” - BBC History Magazine
“The great success of Martin Pugh’s sparkling new volume is to set the familiar events of the 1920s and 30s in their proper context and to connect them to longer-term patterns of change…Full of colourful anecdotes, this is social history with a human face.” - BBC Who Do You Think You Are Magazine
“...a pleasingly detailed, straightforward social history of Britain.” - Scotsman
“...a fascinating and entertaining read.” - Daily Express
“...one has the sense of dirty windows being cleaned, revealing remarkably new views.” - Sunday Times
“ ...a lively, tactile history of interwar Britain...is most enjoyable in its evocations of childhood in the Potteries and shrimping on charabanc daytrips to Weston-super-Mare.” - Richard Overy, Literary Review
“This is a provocative thesis and he does thorough justice to it in a lively account of social life in all its aspects – from divorce and drunkenness to holiday jaunts and health.” - John Campbell, Sunday Telegraph
“...comprehensive, vivid and highly readable survey...the richly textured tapestry of this absorbing book.” - Daily Telegraph
“Challenging established narratives is what Martin Pugh does best...In many ways what Pugh has done is to revise The Long Weekend, the snapshot of Britain between the wars written by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge...Where We Danced all Night succeeds is in bringing out both the strangeness and the familiarity of this odd period of history...so rewarding a study.”
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