Katharine Whitehorn
The Revolution’s Near
Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s
By Virginia Nicholson
Viking 526pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
The Fifties are too often spoken of as though they were just a damp patch between the battlefields of the Forties and the fairground of the Sixties. In fact, they were far more interesting than that in many ways, as this admirable book about women in the Fifties makes clear. The only thing I would quarrel with is the title. To be a perfect wife and have an ideal home may have been all that the women’s magazines suggested a girl should aspire to, but in practice she might find her way to being any number of things, from air hostess to lawyer to redcoat at Butlin’s – which may sound negligible but was a high-powered job.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore
'As we read, we know that in a short time the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and colour television will sweep that age over the balustrade and into the sea, but for now everyone is happy.'
Simon Baker is charmed by Graham Swift's new novel, 'Here We Are'.
http://ow.ly/uDL050ylh80