Books of interest for history

[rogerneilson]

Following up a suggestion I made.

Post here any recommendations for books that:

1. Give information about occupations
2. Give information about a period background
3. Give information about the social conditions of the time

This is not for fiction imho.

[rogerneilson]

Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant
by Jeremy Musson

Blurb

Country houses were reliant on an intricate hierarchy of servants, each of whom provided an essential skill. Up and Down Stairs brings to life this hierarchy, showing how large numbers of people lived together under strict segregation and how sometimes this segregation was broken, as with the famous marriage of a squire to his dairymaid at Uppark. Jeremy Musson captures the voices of the servants who ran these vast houses and made them work. From unpublished memoirs to letters, wages, and newspaper articles, he pieces together their daily lives from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The story of domestic servants is inseparable from the story of the country house as an icon of power, civilization, and luxury. This is particularly true with the great estates such as Chatsworth, Hatfield, Burghley mand Wilton. Jeremy Musson looks at how these grand houses were, for centuries, admired and imitated around the world.

[rogerneilson]

Making of Modern Britain
by Andrew Marr

Blurb

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace among the most turbulent and surprising. As the political forum moved from Edwardian smoking rooms to an increasingly democratic Westminster, the people of Britain experimented with extreme ideas as they struggled to answer the question "How should we live?" Socialism? Fascism? Feminism? Meanwhile, fads such as eugenics, vegetarianism, and nudism were gripping the nation, while the popularity of the music hall soared. It was also a time that witnessed the birth of the media as we know it today and the beginnings of the welfare state. Beyond trenches, flappers, and Spitfires, this is a story of strange cults and economic madness, of revolutionaries and heroic inventors, sexual experiments and raucous stage heroines. From organic food to drugs, nightclubs and celebrities to package holidays, crooked bankers to sleazy politicians, the echoes of today's Britain ring from almost every page.


What I thought:

Thoroughly enjoyable and very informative. I learned so much about the Edwardian and 'entre deux guerres' periods. Names that were to me just names now have meaning. Such a disregarded period of our history. I liked the way Marr used themes to pull things together into a good narrative process.

[Northern Lass]

Good Idea Roger and I agree factual not historical fiction

[Antie Em]

My best history reads are anything by Michael Wood, especially In Search of the Dark Ages and In search of Beowulf and anything my Simon Schama - especially The History of Britain - have this in book form and the BBC Documentary series on CD - fascinating stuff.