Whether they like it or not – and they may be getting tired of it by now – Dominic Sandbrook and David Kynaston are bound to be closely compared as social historians of the postwar period. Both seek to capture the texture and the flavour of ordinary life as well as the machinations of those set above us. Both appear to be as familiar with the charts, football scores and shopping lists as they are with Cabinet minutes. Crucially, both have been engaged in producing a series of books – two so far by Kynaston, of a projected six covering the period 1945 to 1979, and four by Sandbrook (of which this is the last), from Suez to that same pivotal year when Margaret Thatcher came to power.

There is an endless fascination for many people in the period just before and just after one was born. Both writers feed – and feed off – this interest. Sandbrook was born in 1974 and the present volume covers the period of his own infancy. His title is drawn from