In the Fifties

This chapter explores the Fifties through the eyes of author Peter Vansittart in In the Fifties (1995). The text is an amalgamation of autobiography and social survey as it captures a time of surprisingly widespread idealism and cultural promise — at least, before the Sixties came around. There were plentiful jobs, equable labour relations, and so on. Adult education thrived; public libraries lent four hundred million books a year; seventeen new universities were planned. Few decades could muster so many books and plays that would come to be seen as literary landmarks. Thus Vansittart presents the decade with its many accomplishments and foibles, elucidating the period through wry accounts of famous figures as well as a number of interesting facts. As this chapter notes, however, while the book is not a comprehensive look into the decade, it is a rather amusing one.