These cultural and social excursions don't always quite work in the series - although to be fair I wonder if the weakest entry in the series - SEASONS IN THE SUN - simply reflected how that period was somewhat more barren in Britain.

Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982 by Dominic Sandbrook

I’m far from taking a 100% anti-Falklands War standpoint – after all, the Argentinian junta had ‘disappeared’ countless left wingers and activists and were pretty much fully paid up Fascists – but more balance would have been needed. Sandbrook has maintained the uniformly high standard of this important series, and leaves the reader impatient for the next volume. The political manoeuvrings of 1979-82 are traced with a novelistic verve that would have done credit to House of Cards, but Sandbrook's interests range much further afield .Parts are hard to cope with if you are squeamish so be prepared for the sickening as well as the thrilling. On the other, it means you get a lot of detail and analysis--occasionally not entirely necessary or a bit repetitive. A very enjoyable novel with believable characters and interpersonal tensions, plus a gripping storyline. the great wheels are set in motion by those which are very minute'; the second is Tolstoy's comment in War and Peace that 'most of the people paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided by their private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at that period were most useful. Thus his account is definitely unconventional in many ways without wandering into the weeds of bizarre eccentricity.

Who Dares Wins: Books - AbeBooks Sas Who Dares Wins: Books - AbeBooks

SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, IN HEAVY BLACK PEN, ON TITLE PAGE 'To Dan, Go Beyond, Ollie Ollerton'. Against this background, Thatcher won government with a monetarist program to reverse Britain's decline. It seems like this is tongue and cheek and something that any fairly well informed British reader would know was a dry joke, but it grates me nonetheless, even in a work of more popular history. Much material was familiar but he tells the story well almost like a geeky fan and his thesis of aspiration driving ordinary people links with the arrival of Thatcher.It slides compellingly from socialism to Soft Cell’s Tainted Love and made me want to be 10 again, bewildered by the Falklands War on TV. But more significantly, areas within the towns and cities which they served were left as heartless wastelands of urban decay and deprivation. for riots or unemployment or poverty or a lack of empathy) and time and time again he says there is a lot of evidence on the negative side against her.

Who Dares Wins - Dominic Sandbrook

The two epigraphs heading the book suggest who the real actors of history may be: the first is Fielding's remark in Tom Jones, that 'many little circumstances are omitted by injudicious historians . So, once you come to terms with the fact that Sandbrook's style is to cover as many topics as possible, with an average of maybe one in five being actually engaging, there is little choice other than to plough on to the bitter end. This is the first big contemporary account of an era I can remember living through (I was 15 in 1979) and you may feel a nice balance of piquancy and poignancy in having those years brought to life by the historian’s magic wand. If you like a rollercoaster ride of gunfights, twists, violence, swearing and treachery, then this is for you. first edition ("First published in the United Kingdom in 2009", first printing (complete number line).Brideshead Revisited, Boys from the Blackstuff, inner-city riots, the wedding of Lady Di and Prince Charles, the Falklands conflict, the foundation of the SDP — it’s all here.