The period comes alive - Rated 
Max Arthur's book is up to his usual standard. In their own words, the joys fears and pains of ordinary people. Far from those history books which talk only of Kings and battles and court intrigues, this history brings to life the period. One is struck above all by the poverty and deprivation, by the huge social inequalities which today one would associate with third world countries, but also by the ingenuity of those who were trying to survive. Dirt, death and hardship are at the centre of this book. Reading the chapters on work, you understand why in 1914 many joined the army hoping for a better life.
The only frustrating element is the patchwork or often short quotations. Complement this reading with "The Classic slum" by Robert Roberts ( I think)
Incredible portrait of an era - Rated
I wasn't sure what to expect from an oral history book sourced, as this had to be, from archive material - but I was not disappointed. From the first page you get an extraordinary insight into an era so different from today that only the simple honesty of the reminiscences convinces you that life can have once been like that in the lifetime of our grandparents and great grandparents. It's an all-round portrait of the time - swingeing poverty, illness and infant deaths, life in the criminal and underworld classes, politics and the suffragettes, travel, entertainment - and the yawning chasm between the lives of the well-off upper class and the rest of the country. It's an intensely vivid and moving portrayal of a neglected era of our history. If you like oral history, this is a 'must-read' - a real treat.
Brilliant insight - Rated
My parents were both born during the Edwardian period - my mother is keeping going for her telegram! To me, it is almost a lost decade nestling between Victorian times and WW1 when the world really changed. Very little is known about it and it was an eye-opening experience to read this masterful book that explaims the world into which Mum & Dad were born. Only a 100 years ago and, yet, so different. I bought a second copy that my mother's carer is reading to her. Stephen Fry was right in saying "An extraordinary and immensely moving book." Thank you Max Arthur.
A unique collection of memories - Rated
Whenever I thought of the Edwardian era, the images I had tended to be of the genteel world of Upstairs, Downstairs, or of the supremely wealthy first class victims of the Titanic. Yet this amazing book immediately dismissed those ridiculously limited ideas. For here are the real Edwardians, in their own words, and what comes across most strongly is that their lives were, by and large, ones of hard labour and early death, of few pleasures and grinding, relentless, poverty. I was amazed at their descriptions - the conditions they lived in seemed more relevant to the eighteenth century than the twentieth. Max Arthur has chosen the accounts for maximum impact - and what an impact they have. An immensely moving read, I can recommend it highly - not just to those with an interest in social history, but to anyone curious to know how their near ancestors lived.
A SPLENDID READ - Rated
This is a superb book, a window on the lost world of our grandparents and greatgrandparents. For those like myself, whose grandparents lived and worked in Britain in the years between the death of Queen Victoria (Kipling's 'Widow at Windsor') and the death of her son Edward VII (known to the caricaturists as 'Tum-tum'), the recollections of several hundred ordinary men and women - and children - will bring vividly to mind an era that, with its squalour and its splendour, laid the foundation of our own world almost a century later.
|
