Having it so Good

Having It So Good evokes Britain’s emergence from the shadow of war and the privations of rationing into a period of growing affluence – but declining influence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and new coffee bars of 1950s Britain – and also into the secret Cabinet rooms where politicians and mandarins made contingency plans for the possible catastrophe of a nuclear war. Hennessy brings to life the ageing Churchill; the highly-strung Anthony Eden taking the country to war in the teeth of American opposition and world opinion; and the rise of Harold ‘Supermac’ Macmillan, gliding over problems with his Edwardian insouciance.