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Age of Hope  By  cover art

Age of Hope

By: Richard Toye
Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
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Publisher's summary

A comprehensive history of the Labour party from one of the brightest young historians of 20th century Britain.

2024 marks the centenary of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. What legacy of the past have they left behind? How far has each Labour administration influenced succeeding administrations? Above all, was the Attlee government of 1945 really the golden period of Labour power?

Professor Richard Toye explores Labour’s exercise of power as a continuum, setting Attlee’s administration in long-term historical context between the first Labour Government of 1924 and the current party under Keir Starmer. Within this context he shows why the Attlee administration matters so much and how successive Labour governments have fashioned it in their own image.

Into this story are woven the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900, the First World War, the General Strike of 1926, the Spanish Civil War and the coalition war-time government under Churchill. Also discussed are the great names of Labour history: Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee himself, Ernest Bevin, Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson and Ellen Wilkinson.

Covering Labour's history all the way up to the present - including Wilson and Blair's attempts to wrap themselves in Attlee’s mantle and Corbyn’s version of Attlee focussed on the NHS and the welfare state - Age of Hope is an incisive, informative look at a political party that has been fundamental in shaping modern Britain and will be equally instrumental in its future.

©2023 Richard Toye (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"The clue to our future lies in our past and Toye has winkled it out with elegant and devastating precision. Anyone who wants to find the nuggets of hope in today's Britain as we approach a watershed election needs to read this book and see what pragmatic idealism achieved between 1945 and 1951." (Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda)

"This is a stunningly original revision of the Attlee government and its impact on British society. It's the best book I've read this year." (Frank Field, former MP for Birkenhead)

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