JULIET GARDINER
The Thirties
An Intimate History
For Joseph
CONTENTS
Prologue The Eve of the Decade
Part 2 The Search for Solutions
6 ‘Can We Conquer Unemployment?’
Part 3 Planning England (and Scotland and Wales)
16 Wanting the Palm not the Dust
17 Choosing Between Gas Masks and God’s Tasks
Coda ‘The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself …’
24 A Scenic Ride to Catastrophe
There will be time to audit The accounts later, there will be sunlight later And the equation will come out at last.
Louis MacNeice, ‘Autumn Journal’ (1939)
The thirties is a statement as well as a decade. And it is one that is frequently heard today, because while those years are gradually slipping from our grasp, what they have come to represent is ever more present: confusion, financial crises, rising unemployment, scepticism about politicians, questions about the proper reach of Britain’s role in the world.
Famously,