The Thirties by Juliet Gardiner is a big book, both in terms of sheer size and of material covered. It was such an eventful decade and, not surprisingly, Gardiner’s response to it is a long, detailed book. In many ways, what this book did best was illustrate just how quickly change can happen and how arbitrary is it to lump the disparate activities of ten eventful years together under one heading as though they were related by something other than proximity. And that’s what I love history books based on chronology rather than themes: you get a much richer portrait of how daily life evolved over a period than if you focus on just certain social, political, or economic developments. This is not a quick read certainly, with so much to cover and with Gardiner’s usual level of magnificent detail, but it’s always an interesting and educational one.
Chapters eighteen (“A1 Men and Consuming Women”) and nineteen (“Holy Deadlock”) were my favourites, the first dealing with physical fitness and consumer trends, the second with the status of women, family planning, and attitudes towards homosexuals. These were the fun, relatively light chapters after hundreds of pages detailing the plight of the working man (and, in quite some detail, woman) and the escalating political tensions across Europe (always an interesting topic, never more so than during this eventful era). Gardiner, as usual, surprised with delightfully esoteric details on the mundane features of daily life that were certainly never covered in my school textbooks. For example:
Mothers were simply dying in childbirth at a far greater rate in the depressed areas: poor nutrition during pregnancy meant that in the 1930s it was four times as dangerous to bear a child as it was to work down a coalmine. (p. 71)
A report in 1935 estimated that 91 per cent of boys between fourteen and eighteen years of age never engaged in any form of physical activity at all (Newcastle presented a particularly inert picture). While boys at public schools were drilling in Officer Training Corps, playing strenuous games of rugby and springing effortlessly over vaulting horses in the gymnasium, it was rather different for other chaps. Yet, to the disquiet of the Board of Education, officer recruits to the elite military academies of the Woolwich and Sandhurst were found to be pretty weedy too, and it was claimed that the War Office was having to review the amount of baggage a soldier could be expected to carry. It seemed pointless to contemplate undertaking a comprehensive and cripplingly expensive military rearmament programme if the bodies required to operate the arms or drop the bombs would not be up to the task. (p. 515)
In 1931 the average age at marriage was twenty-seven for men and twenty-five for women – though working-class couples tended to marry younger than middle-class ones. While only 34 per cent of women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-nine were married in 1901, this had increased to 41 per cent by 1931. (p. 554)
The Thirties covers many years and many topics – in surprising detail – and though I worried at the onset that Gardiner had been perhaps over-ambitious, I was impressed by the skillful result. It’s vastly informative and, more importantly, entertaining!
The Captive Reader 
Wow, this sounds like a really interesting book. I always enjoy finding out about the historical context of the books I’m reading, so this is definitely one that I’ll be adding to the wishlist. Thanks very much!
This definitely gives all sorts of context so would be a great compliment to novels written or set during the era!
This is a book I’ve considered for a while… maybe more to dip in and out of, rather than read in full. I’m surprised by the low percentage of marriage rates in both 1901 and 1931.
Dipping in and out is probably the best approach. I felt the pressure to go right at it and read through since I knew there were people in line for it at the library. A little overwhelming!
This sounds completely amazing, I’ll have to hunt down a copy. I’, writing a paper about women and consumption, though I’m focusing on the Victorian age, so that chapter sounds especially interesting to me.
I’m sure that chapter would be really interesting then, showing how consumer trends had evolved from the period that you’ve been studying!
This book never fails to catch my eye when I’m browsing in a bookshop.
And I thought it was just kids of this generation who did very little in the way of physical activity! Very interesting bit of information…
It’s definitely worth picking up one day, either from the bookstore or the library, as it’s filled with interesting tibits of information like that!
This is one I very much want. Juliet Gardiner also wrote the book which accompanied the TV series, The Edwardian Country House in which several people ‘went back in time’ to experience life as lived both above and below stairs in the Edwardian era. Nonetheless, the book has a lot of well-researched information on this period, from table laying to beauty treats! She also wrote The 1940s House, again to accompany a TV series.
My favourite Gardiner book still remains Wartime: Britain 1939 -1945 though I loved The Blitz too (which I reviewed here last month).
Great review. I think what shocked me most was the avg. age of marriage in 1931 – 27 and 25? I’ve always thought of people getting married at younger ages at that point in history. You did a great job of making a history book sound interesting! 🙂
History is always interesting! I generally prefer it to fiction though I’ve struggled in the past with how to review it.
I have this sitting on a shelf back in England and can’t wait to read it! It sounds like a fascinating read, though the length does daunt me!
The length is daunting. I think that if I’d owned it I would have dipped in and out of it, which is probably the best way to approach a book of this size and breadth. As it is, I powered through which was educational but exhausting.
I have had this on my Amazon wish list for EVER… this review has convinced me that’s it’s time to put my hand in my pocket and BUY IT! Sounds like a fantastic read – can’t wait!
It is fantastic! I hope you enjoy it.
I’m really looking forward to reading this one after your great review, Claire. I’ve been reading a lot of Inter-War British lit. for awhile, and I’d love to learn more about Britain in the 30s. Thanks for the review, Claire!
This would be a perfect compliment to inter-war lit. I hope you enjoy it!
This one had too much labor stuff for me. I felt all dreary after reading most of the chapters — I should have persisted all the way to 18 and 19, as they do sound like the exact sort of thing I love.
The labour bits did get a bit trying at times – I don’t particularly care about marches or protests though I did love hearing about how library usage increased because of unemployment and those sorts of social changes described in the early parts of the book.
This sounds like one I’d really enjoy! The Thirties were definitely a tumultuous period in world history and I like the idea of looking at them on their own as a cultural phenomenon, not just as the period of the Great Depression and build-up to second world war.