I set myself the challenge some time ago to read David Kynaston’s monumental history of post-war Britain. I thought of it as a challenge not because it’s a difficult read. Far from it. Kynaston writes elegantly and clearly and is never dull. It is, however, a long series, running to some 2,500 pages over the four volumes covering 1945 and 1965. (Further books are planned taking the series to 1979).

I have just finished the first volume, Austerity Britain: 1945-1951 and was mightily impressed by it. Political and social history is rarely as vivid and engaging as this. It begins with Britons celebrating the end of World War 2 and ends with the run-up to the election of 1951 and the return to power of Winston Churchill, by then in his mid-70s. The period was, for the vast majority of British people, one marked by deprivation and hardship. These were years of empty shelves, ration books, shopping coupons, and general drabness. Yet against this background the British people were living through a period of extraordinary innovation and change. These were the years that saw the launch of The National Health Service, the beginnings of comprehensive education, extensive nationalization of key industries, and the rebuilding of much of the country’s urban infrastructure after the devastating destruction of the war and earlier social neglect.

Kynaston’s extraordinary achievement is to compose an utterly convincing “soundscape” of British life in the period by collecting so many voices and stories from such a range of people. This is not history told by the great and the good. The important politicians of the time (Attlee, Bevan, Wilson, and so on) feature, of course, but so do hundreds of ordinary citizens from all over the country. Miners, shopkeepers, factory workers, and housewives are all given a voice here through letters, diaries, and the findings of the Mass-Observation research project started in the 1930s.

In many respects, and perhaps only in the most superficial and obvious respects, Britain today looks, sounds, and feels nothing like the nation of the 1940s, but I was struck most not by the differences but by the similarities of the country eight decades apart. So many of the same problems persist. Managing the consequences of its long gone empire, deep class and wealth divisions, vital social issues such as affordable housing; these were the challenges of the 1940s and continue to be challenges eighty years later.