Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-82

by Dominic Sandbrook Allen Lane 976pp £35 The Week Bookshop £28.99 (incl. p&p)

The fifth instalment of Dominic Sandbrook’s magisterial survey of life in Britain since the 1950s chronicles the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, said John McTernan in the FT. According to Sandbrook, these three years were the “most exciting and controversial” in the UK’s postwar history. Economically, they marked a watershed, with the country breaking from the postwar consensus – characterised by high taxation, nationalisation and powerful trade unions – and embracing free-market policies. They were also a time of political upheaval, with widespread protests against unemployment, riots in Brixton and Toxteth, bitter battles between central government and left-wing councils (such as Ken Livingstone’s GLC), and the formation of a new party, the SDP. Sandbrook has immersed himself in the politics and culture of the era – claiming to have read “every edition” of all the main newspapers – and his diligence “shows”. This “full and rich” history crams a staggering number of events into its 976 pages.

Had this book been confined to a discussion of early 1980s politics, it might have been a “tough read”, said Anthony Quinn in The Observer. Fortunately, Sandbrook also evokes the “sights, sounds and smells” of the period. He reminds us “how awful restaurant food was back then”; discusses the proliferation of wine bars (and bands such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran that catered to their “clientele’s aspirations”); and vividly recounts major sporting events, such as “Botham’s Ashes” and the Ovett-Coe 800m and 1500m finals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. He also displays an “absolutely breathtaking” knowledge of TV shows, said A.N. Wilson in The Times: “the more trivial the better”. This “vividly panoramic history” ranges from high politics to ordinary life, said Francis Wheen in the Literary Review. From the “Falklands factor” to the F-plan diet, from steel strikes to Sloane Rangers, Sandbrook covers every facet of the early 1980s. But the thing that most defined this era was the “rebirth of a patriotic populism”. Thatcher’s victory in the Falklands, he suggests, prompted a sea change in national psychology. Talk of “decline” gave way to bombast; phrases such as “Our Country at its Best” and “The British are Back!” became common (even the Austin Metro was “a British car to beat the world”). “Perhaps it was here,” Sandbrook reflects, “that the road to Brexit began.” This parting thought is “something to chew on while we wait for the next course of this richly satisfying historical feast”.