David Kynaston has written interesting books on cricket but is perhaps best known as a social historian who has been published detailed histories of post-1945 Britain for some years now.
His latest book Deep Into The Sixties Britain 1965-66 is published on 24th September. Like others in the series it provides interesting and often quirky details about everyday life quoting from original sources like diaries. Kynaston notes the comment for example that the 1960s never reached Blackburn.
He tried when at Oxford to get E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class discussed but was ‘immediately closed down by the tutor’ (Times 19th September).
He completed a PhD at LSE in 1983 but then quite academia to become an independent researcher, much as Thompson did himself in the early 1970s. It was a shrewd move. We would not have had his detailed social histories had he remained anchored in what has increasingly become the business University.
Kmflett's Blog 
Leave a comment