Such recent history but so much change, how far away it all seems! For many readers having lived through the period, there is the fascination of hindsight, there is the added bonus of the background to some of the topline stories of the day, and there is the nostalgic fascination and sometimes horror as Andy McSmith recalls the gadgets and gruesome fashions and mores of the decade.
The 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into another country. From the Falklands war and the miners' strike to Bobby Sands and the Guildford Four, this title uncovers the truth behind the decade that changed Britain forever.
No Such Thing as Society : A History of Britain in the 1980s Synopsis
The 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into another country. The changes were not superficial, like the revolution in fashion and music that enlivened the 1960s; nor were they quite as unsettling and joyless as the troubles of the 1970s. And yet they were irreversible. By the end of the decade, society as a whole was wealthier, money was easier to borrow, there was less social upheaval, less uncertainty about the future. Perhaps the greatest transformation of the decade was that by 1990, the British lived in a new ideological universe where the defining conflict of the twentieth century, between capitalism and socialism, was over. Thatcherism took the politics out of politics and created vast differences between rich and poor, but no expectation that the existence of such gross inequalities was a problem that society or government could solve - because as Mrs Thatcher said, 'There is no such thing as society ...people must look to themselves first'. From the Falklands war and the miners' strike to Bobby Sands and the Guildford Four, from Diana and the New Romantics to Live Aid and the 'big bang', from the Rubik's cube to the ZX Spectrum, McSmith's brilliant narrative account uncovers the truth behind the decade that changed Britain forever.
Andy McSmith has been chief reporter of the Independent newspaper since April 2007, having previously been a political correspondent on the same paper, and political editor of the Independent on Sunday and chief political correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and Observer. He lives in London.
