A Northern Wind

From Daleks and dingy tower blocks to nuclear threats, this addictively readable book charts dizzying change. As a master storyteller, David Kynaston offers a richly detailed and immersive exploration of an era marked by profound social and cultural upheaval. Sometimes moving, often comic, always fascinating, A Northern Wind captures the essence of 1960s Britain like never before.

How much can change in two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic arrival of the Beatles from Liverpool, to a scandal that shook the Tory government, and the election of Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman divergent from his Old Etonian predecessors.

A Northern Wind, the keenly anticipated next instalment of David Kynaston’s acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers, and first-hand recollections, Kynaston’s masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill – while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history.

Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC’s controversial That Was The Week That Was; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham’s Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional, and immersive, Tales of a New Jerusalem has transformed how we see and understand post-war Britain. A Northern Wind continues the journey.

'Magnificent . . . The early Sixties have never been recounted so well'

The Times, Books of the Year

'A breathtaking array of treasures . . . A book to savour'

TLS

'Extraordinarily atmospheric, capturing more than anything a sense of what this moment might have felt like to live through'

Financial Times

'Kynaston is the most humane and even-handed chronicler of our time, and the one best-qualified to carry this mightily compelling national story onwards'

Observer