A Social History of Britain Between the Wars

We Danced All Night

So often, the period between our two World Wars is portrayed as a time of unremitting poverty, rising crime and mass employment. But what if there was another side to the story, one of dancing, cinema-going and football pools?

Skilfully evoked, vividly captured social history

Pugh is one of the most well-respected, diligent and honest scholars working in British history today. This book deserves to be read

A beguiling and often thought-provoking book

A lively, tactile history of inter-war Britain

A fascinating and entertaining read. The detail alone is impressive

Comprehensive, vivid and highly readable ... richly textured [and] absorbing

A wide-ranging study of a fascinating period, We Danced All Night is also a good reference book... vividly evokes a time when tinned and processed food was really quite the thing, and the height of suburban sophistication was a new Tudorbethan house

This is a provocative and entertaining thesis and he does thorough justice to it in a lively account of social life in all its aspects - from divorce and drunkenness to holiday jaunts and health

As Pugh moves from one topic to the next, one has the sense of dirty windows being cleaned, revealing remarkably new views

A highly readable account of a foreign country where they really did do things differently.

Martin Pugh taught history at the Aligarh Muslim University, India, from 1969-71 on V.S.O.; he was Professor of British History at Newcastle University until 1999, and Research Professor in History at Liverpool John Moores University 1999-2002. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the advisory panel of the B.B.C. History Magazine, and the author of eleven books on nineteenth and twentieth century history. He lives in Northumberland where he divides his time between gardening, research and writing.

Bounded by the Great War on one side and by the looming shadow of the Second World War on the other, the inter-war period has characteristically been portrayed as a time of great and unrelenting depression. In Martin Pugh's lively and thought-provoking book, however, the acclaimed historian vividly shows how the British people reacted to the privations of wartime by indulging in leisure and entertainment activities of all kinds - from dancing and cinema going to smoking, football pools and paid holidays. 
 
He explodes the myths of a nation of unwed women, revealing that in the 1930s the institution of marriage was reaching its heyday, and points to a rise in real incomes, improvements in diet and health and the spread of cheap luxuries. The result is an extraordinary, engaging work of history that presents us with a fresh perspective and brings out both the strangeness and the familiarity of this point in time.

The History of One Radical Family

The Pankhursts

A re-issue of Martin Pugh's comprehensive and compelling biography of the Pankhurst family, an extraordinary family whose work for the rights of women challenged the very heart of the polticial and social establishment.

A marvellously gripping narrative with twists and turns of shock and poignancy that are worthy of a three-decker Victorian novel...exposes the full extent of the dysfunctional family that lay just beneath the surface of the Pankhursts' public image

Takes all the previous works on its subject and nudges them off the shelf

A family saga like no other, superbly researched and profoundly stirring

Move over, Mitfords, The Pankhursts demand centre stage, as women who emerged from Edwardian drapery to break the rules of British society

Martin Pugh was Professor of British History at Newcastle University and Research Professor in History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the advisory panel of the BBC History Magazine, and the author of over twelve books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. He lives in Northumberland.

The suffragettes outraged Victorian society but their personal lives were just as dramatic as their public actions. In this gripping and incisive account of the Pankhursts, Martin Pugh reveals the full story behind this unique family: Emmeline, the domineering mother; Christabel, the favourite daughter, who became an Adventist and admirer of Mussolini; Sylvia, the 'scarlet woman'; adn Adela, banished to Australia after a bitter rift. 
 
The result is a narrative that reads like a novel, and a brilliant insight into the history of a family that changed the face of British society for ever.

Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars

Hurrah For The Blackshirts!

Timely and original, this remarkable book reveals for the first time how close Britain came to being a Fascist state in the inter-war years.

This scholarly book shows how widespread fascism was before and in tandem with Mosley's New Party, the British Union of Fascists, half the Conservative Party and many royals

The link between a distinct wing of Conservatism and the Italian form of fascism is substantiated in this outstandingly revelatory book

Fascism did not just come from the East-End toughs. It also came from women, the countryside and from parts of the industrial North. Pugh explores these various strands with a keen eye for detail and a lively sense of the absurd

This book demonstrates for the first time the true spread and depth of fascist beliefs- and the extent to which they were distinctly British

Martin Pugh was Professor of Modern British History at Newcastle University until 1999, and Research Professor in History at Liverpool John Moores University from 1999 to 2002. He has written ten books on aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century history and is on the board of BBC History Magazine. He is currently writing a social history of Britain between the wars for Cape and Pimlico.

Britain is celebrated for having avoided the extremism, political violence and instability that blighted many European countries between the two world wars. But her success was a closer thing than has been realized. Disillusionment with parliamentary democracy, outbreaks of fascist violence and fears of communist subversion in industry and the Empire ran through the entire period. 
 
Fascist organizations may have failed to attract the support they achieved elsewhere but fascist ideas were adopted from top to bottom of society and by men and women in all parts of the country. This book will demonstrate for the first time the true spread and depth of fascist beliefs - and the extent to which they were distinctly British. 
 
Rich in anecdotes and extraordinary characters, Hurrah for the Blackshirts! shows us an inter-war Britain on the high-road to fascism but never quite arriving at its destination.

Martin Pugh

An admirable model of how political history should be written

Overall the book is... spliced with incisive arguments and interspersed with challenging verdicts on Labour's evolution... This ambitious Labour history could well become compulsory reading for future party leaders

A startlingly revisionist book... The most provocative and clear-eyed history of the party yet... It is a tribute to Pugh's scholarship that almost everybody will learn something new from this thoughtful book

A timely book... colourful, frequently entertaining

Solid and lasting...thoroughly resourced and researched

A New History of the Labour Party

Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era. 
 
Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.

Martin Pugh

Praise for Speak for Britain!

Excellent and provocative new history

An admirable model of how political history should be written

Overall the book is... spliced with incisive arguments and interspersed with challenging verdicts on Labour's evolution... This ambitious Labour history could well become compulsory reading for future party l ...

Excellent and provocative new history

An admirable model of how political history should be written

Overall the book is... spliced with incisive arguments and interspersed with challenging verdicts on Labour's evolution... This ambitious Labour history could well become compulsory reading for future party l ...

Excellent and provocative new history

An admirable model of how political history should be written

Overall the book is... spliced with incisive arguments and interspersed with challenging verdicts on Labour's evolution... This ambitious Labour history could well become compulsory reading for future party l ...

Books by Martin Pugh

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