Having It So GoodPaperback, 6 August 2020

Winner of the Orwell Prize.

The second part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow of war into growing affluence.

The 1950s was the decade in which Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, Bill Haley released Rock Around the Clock, rationing ended and Britain embarked on the traumatic, disastrous Suez War.

In this highly enjoyable, original book, Peter Hennessy takes his readers into front rooms, classrooms, cabinet rooms and the new high-street coffee bars of Britain to recapture, as no previous history has, the feel, the flavour and the politics of this extraordinary time of change.