On the Cusp: Days of 62
DAVID KYNASTON
(BLOOMSBURY, 256 PP, £18.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.09 • tel 020 7799 4064

Followers of David Kynaston’s series “Tales of a New Jerusalem”, a history of Britain from 1945-1979, are used to hand­ling whoppers. Austerity Britain, which covered the years 1945-51, clocked in at just shy of 700 pages; Family Britain: 1951-57, the best part of 800 pages. Then came two volumes of Modernity Britain, 400-plus pages apiece, that took us first from 1957-59, and then from 1959-62. Now we get an oddity – On The Cusp: Days of 62 – a book that deals with just a few months from a single year – the year, Kynaston argues, in which Britain swung from the olden days into the world we still inhabit. At just over 200 pages, the book is characteristically dense and uncharacteristically light – less a doorstopper than a hinge.