What I've been reading.

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, by David Kynaston. This actually did strike me as something of a "cacophonous and impressionistic mess," but I will readily admit this could be because I cannot appreciate the nuances of some (to me) obscure BBC radio program from 1947. If you are steeped enough in the time period, then maybe the book comes alive for you. For me, I could have used a little more structure and guidance. It seemed too much like "and then this happened, and then this other thing happened, and then person x said y about this other thing in her diary, and then this other person said z about the NHS in his letter to his mum," etc. The book contained a huge amount of raw source material; I would be curious to know the proportion of quoted material to original. Atlantic review.