Britain in the Fifties

Having it So Good

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. 
 
'If the Gods gossip, this is how it would sound' Philip Ziegler, Spectator Books of the Year 
 
 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. 
 
 'Utterly engaging ... a treat. It breathes exhilaration' Libby Purves, The Times 
 
 'A particular treat ... fine, wise and meticulously researched' Andrew Marr 
 
 'Stands clear of the field as our best narrative history of this decisive decade' Peter Clarke, Sunday Times 
 
 'A compelling narrative ... Hennessy's love of the flesh and blood of politics breathes on every page' Tim Gardam, Observer 
 
 'The late Ben Pimlott once described Hennessy as "something of a national institution". You can forget the first two of those five words' Guardian

Peter Hennessy is one of Britain's most celebrated historians, 'who has himself become something of a national institution' (Ben Pimlott). He is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include this book's two immediate predecessors, Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 (1992, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the NCR Prize for Non-fiction) and Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties (2006, winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing). His other books include Cabinet (1986), Whitehall (1989), The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945 (2000), The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst (2002, 2010) and, co-authored with James Jinks, The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945 (2015, winner of the Duke of Westminster's Award for Military Literature and the Mountbatten Maritime Award). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003 and created an independent crossbench life peer as Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield in 2010.

Having It So Good evokes Britain emerging from the shadow of war and the privations of austerity and rationing into growing affluence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and now coffee bars of 1950s Britain - and also into the secret Cabinet rooms in which decisions about the British nuclear bomb were taken and plans made for the catastrophe of nuclear war. He brings to life the ageing Churchill, in his last faltering spell as Prime Minister, the highly-strung Anthony Eden taking his country to war in the teeth of American opposition and world opinion, and the rise of 'Supermac' Harold Macmillan, gliding over problems with his Edwardian insouciance. Above all, Having It So Good captures the smell and the flavour of an extraordinary decade in which affluence and anxiety combined to produce their own winds of change.

Britain 1945-1951

Never Again

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize 
Winner of the NCR Award for Non-Fiction 
 
From the high politics of Court and Cabinet room to the kitchen or the queue, Peter Hennessy's Never Again: Britain 1945-51, the first part of his Post-War Trilogy, recreates life in early post-war Britain. 
 
'Hennessy conjures up the Attlee years more vividly than any previous writer' Ben Pimlott, Guardian 
 
 At the end of the Second World War Britain was in flux. It was an age of rationing and rebuilding; when hope for a better future contrasted with the horror of war. 
 
 Fresh ideals emerged during the common experience of the conflict and the new, widespread belief that everyone should be treated equally led to the creation of the 'welfare state' and the NHS, despite tough economic circumstances. Internationally, Britain was finding a place in a world increasingly overshadowed by Cold War with the Soviet Union. 
 
 'A joy to read' Sunday Times 
 
 'Hennessy is never for a moment dull' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 
 
 'Hennessy is the antithesis of the dry-as-dust academic historian. He laughs a great deal, and punctuates his writing with cheery and illuminating anecdotes' Ian Aitken, Guardian 
 
 'A sympathetic, highly readable, meticulously researched account of the Cabinet room politics and popular habits of life and recreation during the high noon of Labourism' Roy Jenkins, Observer

The first volume of Hennessy's postwar history of Britain concerns an age dominated by the shadow of war. With the beginnings of the Cold War, the foundations of the new Europe and the granting of independence of former colonies, Britain was forced to negotiate a new place in the world. It was also a time of rationing and of rebuilding, marked by the founding of the NHS and the welfare state. This comprehensive history embraces both high politics and everyday experience. It recreates the mood of the time and tells us where people lived, how they worked and what they wore.

Britain in the Early Sixties

Winds of Change

Following Never Again and Having It So Good, the third part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy 
 
'By far the best study of early Sixties Britain ... so much fun, yet still shrewd and important' The Times, Books of the Year 
 
Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War. 
 
In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era. 
 
As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.

Peter Hennessy writes like he talks, which produces a delightfully wandering narrative, peppered with quirky anecdotes, that surreptitiously delivers powerful insights. This is by far the best study of early Sixties Britain; one to please the masses and wow the scholars. ... Hennessy, unique among contemporary historians, understands politics from the inside out. The book is so much fun, yet still shrewd and important

Professor Peter Hennessy is a fine historian of late-twentieth-century Britain. He is a master of all the published sources, and his generous personality, academic distinction and unquestioned integrity have meant that he adds to them a lifetime of the confidences and insights of most of those who have actually made our history. ... So, a standing ovation for Peter Hennessy, a good man who writes very good books.

Hennessy is a national treasure. He is driven by a romantic, almost sensual, fascination with British history, culture, and the quirky intricacies of British democracy and the government machine. His curiosity is insatiable, his memory infinitely capacious.

[G]enially narrated... what makes him such a deft public historian is the way he stitches these patches of rich local colour into a narrative with the widest possible reach. ... Hennessy has such a keen associative eye and such a generous heart for the sheer oddness of everything that the narrative spins along like a comfortable chat.

splendid history of postwar Britain... Hennessy's writing is characterised by a wonderful mixture of wit and erudition.

a deeply-informed book that has, nearly 60 years later, powerful resonance. The foremost chronicler of the era, Hennessy combines the intricate detail with stylistic verve.

This is the third in Hennessy's wonderfully insightful series of books that make up a portrait of a nation coming to terms with victory in a ravaging war and the loss of empire. Like the others - Never Again and Having It So Good - it performs a singular balancing act between social history and cabinet-room politics. No current historian is as versed as Hennessy in the internal cogs and springs of the British state, but he also has a keen eye for the luminous face of passing time.

a masterful survey of Britain as the decade began ... For those who know him only from the radio, Hennessy is as good a writer as he is a talker. ... I am afraid that he is now a treasure.

flavoursome, but authoritative, account ... This history is none the worse - quite the opposite - for being such a personal one; but it is the intense erudition underpinning Hennessy's intimate reflections that makes it so utterly indispensable.

fascinating ... dominated by the author's personal enthusiasms, researches and memories

Harold Macmillan - the presiding figure in Peter Hennessy's magnificent new history - famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to wipe away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a third world war. As with his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy.

The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945

The Silent Deep

'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep. 
 
Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever before. 
 
In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent Deep provides an essential historical perspective.

A tour de force, a valuable resource for naval historians and future generations to wonder at. And I can't help hoping that our current leaders will make themselves aware of some vitally significant issues that it raises.

The lay reader cannot fail to be absorbed by its dramatic tales of cat-and-mouse skirmishes with Soviet hunter-killer submarines, embarrassing spy scandals and lucid accounts of the Falklands War - all enlivened with first-hand testimony from the submariners themselves.

Preparing For The Worst 1945 - 2010

The Secret State

Peter Hennessy's The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010 is the story of secret government plans for combatting attacks on Britain, from the Cold War to modern counter-terrorism. 
 
 Now completely revised and updated, Peter Hennessy's acclaimed account of the secret state includes material from a host of recently declassified documents, to give an up-to-date picture of Whitehall's efforts to defend the safety of the realm. 
 
 What were the secret plans for Britain if World War Three had erupted and 'breakdown' had occurred? When would the Queen have been informed and where would she have gone? How does the contingency planning for a national emergency work today? By what procedures would the Prime Minister authorise a nuclear strike and how would those orders be carried out? This book now gives the most detailed and authoritative answers to all these questions. 
 
 'Riveting, path-breaking and wonderfully readable' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Christopher Andrew, The Times 
 
 'Effective and vivid ... One of the fascinations of this book is the bureaucratic aridity to which Whitehall reduced concepts of bloodcurdling awfulness' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 
 
 'An insider's insider, if ever there was one' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Anthony Howard, New Statesman 
 
 'One of those rare books that reflects credit not only on the author but on its subjects too' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John Crace, Guardian 
 
 Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London, and the Director of the Mile End Institute of Contemporary British Government, Intelligence and Society. He is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes); the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State.

Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary College, London, and the Director of the Mile End Institute of Contemporary British Government, Intelligence and Society. He is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes); the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State (all Penguin).

This updated edition of The Secret State revises Hennessy's picture of the Soviet threat that was presented to ministers from the last days of the Second World War to the 1960s. He maps the size and shape of the Cold War state built in response to that perceived threat, and traces the arguments successive generations of ministers, the military and civil servants have used to justify the British nuclear capability. He also adds new material exploring the threats presented by the IRA and radical Islamic terrorists post 9/11. In what circumstances would the Prime Minister authorize the use of nuclear force and how would his orders be carried out? What would the Queen be told and when? In this captivating new account, Peter Hennessy provides the best answers we have yet had to these questions.

The Office And Its Holders Since 1945

The Prime Minister

In The Prime Minister: the Office and its Holders since 1945, Peter Hennessy explores the formal powers of the Prime Minister and how each incumbent has made the job his or her own. 
 
 Drawing on unparalleled access to many of the leading figures, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, he has built up a picture of the hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office. 
 
 From recently declassified archival material he reconstructs, often for the first time, precise prime ministerial attitudes towards the key issues of peace and war. He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945, from Clement Atlee and Winston Churchhill to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and proposes a new specification for the premiership as it enters its fourth century. 
 
 'I really can't praise it too highly: a tremendous achievement ... an instant classic' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Antony Jay, author of Yes, Prime Minister 
 
 'Supersedes everything else written on the subject. If I were Tony Blair, I'd keep a copy by my bedside' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Adam Sisman, Observer 
 
 'A must ... far and away the best account of the office of the First Lord of the Treasury, its history, powers and practice, and an independent assessment of the occupants of Downing Street since the Second World War' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Tony Benn, Spectator 
 
 'Important and extremely readable ... Hennessy's portrait of the Blair premiership is fascinating ... a major contribution to our understanding of how we are governed' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Peter Oborne, Sunday Express 
 
 Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Among many other books, he is the author of The Secret State, Whitehall and Never Again: Britain 1945-1951, which in 1993 won the NCR Award for Non-Fiction and the Duff Cooper Prize.

Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Among many other books, he is the author of WHITEHALL ('Much the best book on the British civil service ever to appear', Anthony King, Economist) and NEVER AGAIN: BRITAIN 1945-1951, which in 1993 won the NCR Award for Non-Fiction and the Duff Cooper Prize

In this major study, Peter Hennessy explores the formal powers of the Prime Minister and how each incumbent has made the job his or her own. Drawing on unparalleled access to many of the leading figures, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, he has built up a picture of the hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office. From recently declassified archival material he reconstructs, often for the first time, precise prime ministerial attitudes towards the key issues of peace and war. He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945 and a new specification for the premiership as it enters its fourth century.

Peter Hennessy

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections upon a long and often brilliant career as a social and political observer ... He sees huge challenges ahead in social care, social housing, climate change, artificial intelligence, technical education and the fragility of the Union, which present policies are quite inadequate to address. ... At the heart of the author's thesis is his contention that the British people during the pandemic have shown themselves to be much better than their rulers; that we must find means to mobilise our true national spirit through a nobler politics ... His enthusiasm and, yes, virtue shine through its pages, together with his rage towards those who fail us in the "duty of care" of his title. It is an inspirational work.

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such conviction. It is a valuable and exceptionally well-reasoned guide to how we might turn round a country battered not by war, as in 1945, but by a wave of disease unknown in living memory.

Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty of Care is much more than just an appeal for a politics of sanity and mutual respect. It is also, no less importantly, and more interestingly, a Confucian appeal for a politics of benevolence.

Part history, part manifesto ... The warmth and wisdom of Hennessy's book, peppered with personal reflection and marked by his deeply held commitment to a society of equals, is inspiring.

The detailed prescriptions for a better future advanced in this book deserve to be read by anyone actively engaged in politics today. Nobody knows more about the world of high politics in the United Kingdom than Peter Hennessy.

Peter Hennessy understands just how Britain ticks. ... In this latest short, but compelling, book he brings all that knowledge and sense of perspective to a remarkable analysis

In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy draws a link between the history of the postwar welfare state and the post-pandemic case for a new settlement ... Admirably concise, it is proof that a strong political case does not require hundreds of pages to make its point.

Britain Before and After Covid

The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? 
 
In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.

Peter Hennessy

Praise for A Duty of Care

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...

Books by Peter Hennessy

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Praise for A Duty of Care

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty ...

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty ...

Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer ... Here is the vision of a kinder Britain, shared by the creators of the welfare state in the first postwar years ... Hennessy's book is a recital of reflections u ...

deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such convic ...

Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty ...

Books by Peter Hennessy

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...

**Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored.** But A Duty ...