On the Cusp

For me the best book this year was David Kynaston's gloriousOn the Cusp ... It’s rare to read anything so teeming with life - so many diverse voices offering their own glimpse of a world which, as Kynaston convincingly argues, was changing more dramatically than ever before or since. Many people have written about this period between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP, but few have given such a rich sense of living through it -- Philip Hensher * Spectator, Books of the Year *
This is Kynaston at his best. A thousand glimpses of British life in 1962 produce a rich and vivid picture of a nation in all its human complexity, standing at the edge of great change. Beautifully woven, it yields surprises and fresh insights on every page – and in my case a blizzard of memories -- Ian Jack
A compulsive read. He is such a fine historian and sociologist, with an eye and ear for the unexpected, and a sharp sense of humour that makes the reader laugh aloud. It’s generous as well as sharp. For me, it was like reliving some of the most exciting and hopeful months of my life, an illuminating exploration of an important stretch of time. -- Margaret Drabble
'Tales of a New Jerusalem' has already established itself as the definitive history of post-war Britain. This latest instalment has all the eye-catching detail and informed synthesis that Kynaston's admirers have come to expect. I was captivated by its brilliance -- D. J. Taylor
A fascinating crystal of time, Kynaston's superb evocation of Britain ... sparkles with voices from a vanished world ... An entrancing representation, full of exquisite detail and unforgettable voices, On the Cusp invites us in, to the real lives behind historical trends, a door to Britain on the brink of great change -- Kate Williams
What a joy it has been to find myself wholly immersed in the richness of Kynaston’s account of those few amazing, ground-shifting months, just before we were all tipped into the drama of the 1960s proper. There is something hugely, hindsightingly thrilling in reading about the early seed-sowing of a story whose outcome we know so well * Juliet Nicolson *
With his eagle eye, Kynaston selects details and incidents that serve as emblems of larger shifts in the zeitgeist ... He is a wonderfully diligent chronicler of the changing face of popular culture at the time ... Kynaston is a master at mixing key political and social movements with the more humdrum details of everyday life -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
David Kynaston continues his magnificent series on postwar British society with On the Cusp, a riveting study of four pivotal summer months ... Kynaston is a master of popular culture ... But what Kynaston captures again and again - and this is what gives his book such importance - is the conscious, almost fanatical desire by those in authority at the time to dismantle, literally, evidence of the past -- Simon Heffer * Sunday Telegraph *
Kynaston skilfully uses private diaries, archives, memoirs, social surveys, newspapers and magazines to give the flavour of the period and what people were thinking not just in Westminster and Whitehall but in, for example, Birmingham, Manchester, Barrow-in-Furness, Keighley, Bournemouth and Llanfrothen in north Wales ... Absorbing * New Statesman *
It has all the characteristic hallmarks of [Kynaston's] writing: vivid pointillist detail, an extraordinary range of sources and penetrating analysis of evidence ... Kynaston is a master of minutiae and the great joy of his book is to be found in fragments, anecdotes and vignettes -- Piers Brendon * Literary Review *
Excellent * Choice Magazine *
Kynaston’s impressive history of Britain comes to the year 1962 … His ongoing achievement – aside from managing the prodigious quantities of material – is to convince his readers, who know well what comes next, of real lives being lived in near real time, and of a future as unwritten then as ours is today * Guardian *