Heatwave - John Williams

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'A teeming chronicle of those scorching months. Superbly researched.' THE TIMES'Scorching, animated and essential reading. Superb.' THE MAIL ON SUNDAY'Grippingly captures the three months that shook Britain's cultural landscape' PAULINE BLACK'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. I lived through those cruel months, and Williams recreates them with intense skill' SIMON GARFIELD'An absolute joy' PETE PAPHIDES'Engrossing...powerful...goes way beyond nostalgia' DAVID KYNASTONWith temperatures soaring to 35ºC, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the standpipes, the summer of 1976 was always remembered as Britain's hottest. But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads. Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together - as long as you were white, male and straight. In July, Tom Robinson writes a song called Glad to be Gay, and by August bank holiday, Black youth are making the police run for their lives in the almighty riot at the Notting Hill Carnival. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old
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