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ISSN 1292-8968

RECENTLY PUBLISHED: ISSUE 37 (2020)

War and Peace in Twentieth-Century Britain : Studies in Memory of Paul Addison
Edited by Antoine Capet

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We live today in post-Thatcherite Britain. I wrote the book in another country: post-war Britain. I wrote it, also, in a mood of optimism in which the past and the present were interconnected. I was proud of the part Britain had played in the Second World War. […] I saw in the home front the paradox that social solidarity worked in favour of the Left. […] The Road to 1945 was written during the latter half ot the Heath government of 1972-4, and the first year or so of the Labour governments of 1974-9. That problems were mounting was obvious: the ‘post-war consensus’ was under pressure. I believed, however, that the problems could be overcome by shifting the post-war settlement further to the Left. The Conservatives were bound to protest, but in the end they would reconcile themselves to the facts, as they had so often in the past. Whatever Mrs Thatcher’s intentions when she arrived at Number Ten, I did not imagine that any government had the power to repeal the post-war settlement. I was wrong of course: society had changed.

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Paul Addison, ‘Epilogue : The Road to 1945 Revisited’ (The Road to 1945, Pimlico reissue, 1994 : 280)

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