Promised You A Miracle

Austin Metros and Chariots of Fire, cricket balls and petrol bombs, Sloane Rangers and Boys from the Blackstuff . . . Andy Beckett's lively and even-handed account of two years in the life of modern Britons is bracingly anti-nostalgic. Focusing sharply on key players and events, he teases out the paradoxes of those sharp-elbowed and irony-free times, and leaves the reader with provoking questions about how we got here from there

Hilary Mantel

Promised You a Miracle is intelligent, entertaining, readable, convincing and timely. It is history well told and properly done

Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

Beckett is a lucid, focussed writer . . . There is a wry, shrewd humanity to his historical interests

Richard Davenport-Hines, Observer

A breezy and very intelligent anatomy of the years 1980-82 . . . This is not conventional political history - and is all the better for it. Beckett is as interested in the flowering of independent television production companies and the regeneration of London's Docklands as he is in monetarism, the Falklands War and the assault on the trade unions

Jonathan Derbyshire, Prospect

[A] gripping mixture of contemporary history and vivid reportage

John Campbell, Independent

Those who lived through the early eighties - who spent all that time wondering what the hell was going to happen next - will enjoy Beckett's work because it validates what at times seemed like a waking dream, or sometimes a waking nightmare. For those too young, the book is valuable as a reminder that there were other times in recent history when it seemed everything was beginning to slide

Jamie Kenny, Big Issue

Beckett has a fine eye for detail

Andrew Neather, Evening Standard

[Beckett] mixes history, journalism and autobiography. He has a strong sense of place

Richard Vinen, Literary Review

The appeal of Beckett's book is that he succeeds in showing rather than merely telling us why his chosen period was pivotal in the life of the nation. For those who lived through all the turbulence, as I did, it reawakens memories and helps reconnect you with the person you once were. For those who did not, or who cannot remember, it recounts well how an old nation roused itself from slumber and dared to change the course on which it seemed set

Jason Cowley, New Statesman