Travis Elborough, author of two previous anthologies, has raided the diaries and journals of 100 witnesses to compile this intriguing history of modern Britain. His sources range from movers and shakers to the relatively obscure and embrace all aspects of social, political and cultural life, including extracts from a couple of unpublished teenage diaries.
There is plenty to entertain, amuse, enlighten and occasionally horrify. This is Beatrice Webb in 1903 on dinner with a brash young MP called Winston Churchill: “First impressions: restless, almost intolerably so ... egotistical, bumptious, shallow minded and reactionary, but with a certain personal magnetism, great pluck and some originality.”
This, from Vera Brittain on a row with her piano teacher who expressed horror at her assertion that she intended to earn her living: “‘What were fathers for,’ he asked. I replied very heatedly that I did not intend to be kept by mine, that I had more brains than my brothers and why shouldn’t I use them.”
The century ends with a whimper in the shape of this entry from former MP Oona King: “My whole life I thought I’d be at a wild party at the end of the millennium. Instead, I was queuing outside Stratford tube station. It was the only way to get to the Dome.”
Ah yes, the Dome. Enjoy.
• Our History of the 20th Century, compiled by Travis Elborough, is published by Michael O’Mara Books (£25). To order a copy for £21.25 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
