All the usual things that we have come to expect are here - the politics, sports events, cultural happenings and, perhaps most interestingly, diary excerpts from a wide range of people. I’m assuming that Mass Observation are less active in this period (1957 to 1962) as we don’t hear much from them at all. It might be nice to hear some new voices as David seems to rely on just a small number of diarists and we can almost predict what they might say about any given subject but perhaps sources are limited.
As you might expect for someone born not long after the period covered in the book there are an increasing number of names from politics and culture that I am familiar with from my childhood and it is interesting to see how they began and how they were initially received.
The section on town planning and redevelopment did get a little tedious and went on a bit too much but again I’m guessing that at the time it was a big thing, was impacting many lives and the subject of a lot of debate. And of course many of the developments that went up in those days are still with us, even if we are in the process of currently demolishing many of them, acknowledging the mistakes that were made (along with the best parts that still remain - witness the Park Hill flats in Sheffield for example.
I’m reading these massive tomes over lunch so I take them only in small parts and it takes me a long time to get thorough them but I do enjoy reading them and dipping into them a few pages a day seems to work well for me.
Onwards to the swinging sixties!