Description

‘Turner’s seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers’ David Kynaston

‘Reading Alwyn Turner’s account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like trying to recall a dream from three nights ago … uncannily familiar, but the details are downright implausible ‘ Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

Weaving politics and popular culture into a mesmerising tapestry, historian Alwyn Turner tells the definitive story of the Blair, Brown and Cameron years. Some details may trigger a laugh of recognition (the spectre of bird flu; the electoral machinations of Robert Kilroy-Silk). Others are so surreal you could be forgiven for blocking them out first time around (did Peter Mandelson really enlist a Candomble witch doctor to curse Gordon Brown’s press secretary?).

The deepest patterns, however, only reveal themselves at a certain distance. Through the Iraq War and the 2008 crash, the rebirth of light entertainment and the rise of the ‘problematic’, Turner shows how the crisis in the soul of a nation played out in its daily dramas and nightly distractions.

Publisher Review

Up there with the best ... Reading it is almost like an out-of-body experience, in which you realise that your life and times will one day be as ancient to others as the Neolithic period is to us ... All In It Together zings along with such telltale facts and figures, often with an injection of black humour ... Wonderfully shrewd ... Brilliant -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * Hugely engaging ... Turner's genius lies in finding the odd little stories that get under the nation's skin and reveal what people were really thinking ... He writes with a tremendous sense of fun. The result is a rare thing: not just a serious work of contemporary history, but an unashamed, 24-carat hoot -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * Astute and entertaining -- Philip Johnston * Telegraph * Turner's seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers -- David Kynaston Reading Alwyn Turner's account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like trying to recall a dream from three nights ago. The theme and the mood feel uncannily familiar, but the details are downright implausible ... His great skill lies in spotting themes that we might have missed the first time around -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Turner may be an anorak, but he is an acutely intelligent anorak -- Francis Wheen * New Statesman * Turner writes with great fluidity, his tone underpinned by a prevailing sense of irony: even the footnotes are enjoyable ... This is a serious undertaking by a popular historian -- Charlotte Henry * TLS * For the first draft of very recent history, there's no more entertaining writer than Alwyn Turner ... a gloriously funny romp ... amid the welter of anecdotes he also has a thoroughly compelling argument about the loss of trust, the rise of populism and the emergence of Nigel Farage as the most influential politician of the age -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times Books of the Year *