A Northern Wind. Britain 1962-65; Bloomsbury, 2023

How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different 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.

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