State of Emergency, By Dominic Sandbrook

From hooligans to Heath – the early Seventies revisited

Amazingly, Dominic Sandbrook was born in 1974, yet this political, cultural and social history of Britain, 1970-1974 reads as if he was on the spot, taking notes.

He writes of the industrial strife, the troubles in Northern Ireland, Britain's entry into the Common Market, pop music, skinheads and hooligans, Love Thy Neighbour and On the Buses, the rise of feminism and the male chauvinist responses to it, and the continued growth of sexual permissiveness. Bestriding it all is the stubborn, irascible, rude, blinkered but fundamentally honest Prime Minister Edward Heath; the book ends with his downfall.

Sandbrook's next book is to be about the ensuing Wilson/Callaghan administration. Can't wait.