Postwar Britain

[poliphilo]

 I was at the the Charleston Festival yesterday afternoon. Miriam had a spare ticket. We sat in a huge hot tent with hundreds of elderly, middle-class, white people (so we fitted in perfectly) for an event featuring the social historian David Kynaston- who is writing a series of books about postwar Britain. He was supported by the extraordinary triumverate of Nick Hornby, Margaret Drabble and Helena Bonham Carter. Hornby asked questions, Drabble (who is 90 but could pass for 70) talked about belonging to the first generation of young women who saw no reason not to have a family as well as a career- and Bonham Carter read extracts from some of the diaries and other texts that Kynaston uses in his books. Postwar Britain, says Kynaston, ended in 1965 with Churchill's funeral- cue Bonham Carter reading a lot of contemporary gloop about the Great Man-  with the only sour note coming from Kenneth Williams who- in the middle of mourning period-  rejoiced that the "dreary business" would soon be over....

 I do love Kenneth Williams.

I have read nothing by any of the three writers (which made me feel a bit of a fraud) but I have seen a number of Helena Bonham-Carter's movies...