"This is a lucid and comprehensive anatomy of the United Kingdom since 1945, as the nation recovered from the Second World War and built a welfare state, but also lost an empire and struggled to recover a coherent identity and geo-political role in a new, US-led, globalized world order. Teachers and students alike will appreciate the clarity with which it surveys the key lines of social, economic, political, and cultural change that have occurred over the past eighty or so years to make the UK what it is today. A balanced and empirically rich introductory text." - Tom Crook , Oxford Brookes 'This is a wide-ranging and timely study of the United Kingdom since 1945, which brings together key economic, cultural and social developments in one volume, and also relates them to one another. Chris Wrigley has written a well-informed study of a Post-Imperial nation that will be of interest to everyone who wants to understand the transformation of the nation since the Second World War. The book situates the United Kingdom both within European and global developments as well as offering an account of changes at a national level in an interesting and informative way.' -Avram Taylor, Northumbria University " Written in a lively and accessible manner, this book offers a fascinating analysis of the major economic and social developments in the United Kingdom from 1945 to 2020. It is an incisive account of austerity and affluence, examining the impact of trade, industry and financial structures on the economy, people and places.

The text offers compelling insights into social history by exploring broad-ranging developments in tourism, welfare, music, literature and popular entertainment, and the impact these had on the way people lived. It is a perceptive and highly readable contribution to our understanding of the history of the United Kingdom in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -Nicole Robertson , Sheffield Hallam University.