Who Dares Wins
Britain, 1979-1982
Chosen as a Book of the Year in The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the London Evening Standard, the Mail on Sunday, Prospect and BBC History Magazine
Who Dares Wins is the fifth book in my series about Britain since the war, and covers the shortest period. I spent more time on this one than any of the others, partly because of the sheer wealth of material, but also because I wanted to get it right.
It covers probably the single most controversial period in my lifetime: the first Thatcher administration, which still evokes extremely strong feelings today. Many of the events it covers - the advent of the first woman Prime Minister, the catastrophic recession of the early 1980s, the inner-city riots of 1981, the civil war inside the Labour Party, the New Romantics, the Northern Irish hunger strikes and of course the Falklands War - could easily take up hundreds of pages. And the cast of characters - everybody from Margaret Thatcher, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone to Ian Botham, Simon Le Bon and Clive Sinclair - is almost Dickensian in its lurid variety.
This is also the first book that covers a period I remember reasonably well. But I was only five when the decade began, so my impressions of the early 1980s were dominated by things like the excitement of my first visit to McDonalds, the delights of the BBC Micro and the mind-boggling drama of the moment Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison. All of these things, naturally, are in the book.
"A richly satisfying historical feast"
Francis Wheen, Literary Review
Publisher Notes
Margaret Thatcher had come to power in 1979 with a daring plan to reverse Britain's decline into shabbiness and chaos. But as factories closed their doors, dole queues lengthened and the inner cities exploded in flames, would her radical medicine rescue the Sick Man of Europe - or kill it off?
Vivid, surprising and gloriously entertaining, Dominic Sandbrook's new book recreates the decisive turning point in Britain's recent story. For some people this was an age of unparalleled opportunity, the heyday of computers and credit cards, snooker, Sloane Rangers and Spandau Ballet. Yet for others it was an era of shocking bitterness, as industries collapsed, working-class communities buckled and the Labour Party tore itself apart. And when Argentine forces seized the Falkland Islands, it seemed the final humiliation for a wounded, unhappy country, its fortunes now standing on a knife-edge.
Here are the early 1980s in all their gaudy glory. This is the story of Tony Benn, Ian Botham and Princess Diana; Joy Division, Chariots of Fire, the Austin Metro and Juliet Bravo; wine bars, Cruise missiles, the ZX Spectrum and the battle for the Falklands. And towering above them all, the most divisive Prime Minister of modern times - the Iron Lady.
Reviews
"Masterful, mammoth ... rich and rewarding ... One of the bookʼs great strengths is that although we know how the story will end we are still kept in suspense — not because of doubts over the outcome, but because Sandbrook situates the reader firmly back in those crucial years ... The result is a full and rich account of the period. Sandbrook is as at ease with the social, cultural and lifestyle changes of the time as he is with the critical political events, drawing shrewd connections between them."
John McTernan, Financial Times
"Superb ... Like its predecessors, Who Dares Wins is a rich mixture of political narrative and social reportage. It is scholarly, accessible, well written, witty and incisive. It fizzes with character and anecdote. And it presents an unrivalled portrait of the age of Austin Metros, Sinclair home computers [and] Lymeswold cheese."
Piers Brendon, Sunday Times
"Exceptionally dramatic ... Although Sandbrook concentrates on quite a short period of history, he is good on the wider context. He describes vividly the dismay of workers in heavy-industrial areas whose businesses were often wiped out by Mrs Thatcher’s high interest rates, but he also explains how deep the decline had been for many years. And while he airs powerful descriptions of northern misery by good writers such as Jeremy Seabrook and Ian Jack (the latter happily still with us), he also pays attention to the places which got less ink precisely because they were doing pretty well."
Charles Moore, Spectator
"***** Immaculately well-researched, breathtakingly broad and beautifully written ... a history of the everyday as well as of the great affairs of state ... This book evokes with astonishing accuracy what it was like to be alive at the time ... Sandbrook has maintained the uniformly high standard of this important series, and leaves the reader impatient for the next volume."
Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph
"A richly satisfying historical feast ... joyously eclectic ... This is vividly panoramic history, ranging from high affairs of state to the tiniest textural details of everyday life: the ‘Falklands factor’ and the F-plan diet, monetary targets and the ‘mania for home improvement’, steel strikes and Sloane Rangers ... Sandbrook is clearly enjoying himself so much he can’t bear the series to end – and, as a reader, so am I."
Francis Wheen, Literary Review
"Even-handed and enjoyable ... ranging over the sights, sounds and smells of an era that looks almost quaint 40 years on ... This is the first big contemporary account of an era I can remember living through ... and you may feel a nice balance of piquancy and poignancy in having those years brought to life by the historian's magic wand ... Sandbrook is especially good on sport, not just the headline-grabbers of Botham’s Ashes and the boycotted Moscow Olympics but the quieter revolution of snooker, the first televised sport watched by more women than men."
Anthony Quinn, Observer
"A magisterial history of three momentous years ... the author succeeds triumphantly."
Patrick Heren, The Article
"A magnificent history ... Recreating the world of 40 years ago requires exceptional powers of imaginative empathy, together with rigorous attention to the details of everyday life. Sandbrook has these qualities in abundance ... Who Dares Wins captures the period with clairvoyant vividness. Compulsively readable, the book will be indispensable to anyone who wants to understand these pivotal years"
John Gray, New Statesman
"Brilliant ... The political manoeuvrings of 1979-82 are traced with a novelistic verve that would have done credit to House of Cards, but Sandbrook's interests range much further afield ... The entry under 'Bowie, David' in the index is worth buying the book for alone."
Tom Holland, Books of the Year, BBC History Magazine
"A richly entertaining history ... packed with so much enjoyable detail and so many revealing quotes and anecdotes"
Nick Rennison, Books of the Year, Daily Mail
"You don’t have to have grown up with the Mini Metro, Lymeswold cheese and the Sinclair Spectrum v BBC Micro to adore this brilliant history of the Eighties. It slides compellingly from socialism to Soft Cell’s Tainted Love and made me want to be 10 again, bewildered by the Falklands War on TV."
Julian Glover, Books of the Year, London Evening Standard
"Politics and culture, high and low are covered in extraordinary and vivid detail. Brideshead Revisited, Boys from the Blackstuff, inner-city riots, the wedding of Lady Di and Prince Charles, the Falklands conflict, the foundation of the SDP — it’s all here."
Gerard DeGroot, Books of the Year, The Times
"Absolutely breathtaking ... delicious ... a Thucydidean coolness, balance and wisdom that is superb"
A N Wilson, The Times
"Exemplary ... breathtakingly broad and beautifully written."
Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph
"***** A great read ... worth every penny ... an enjoyable romp through my teenage years."
Paul Donnelley, Daily Express
"Dominic Sandbrook’s fluent account of Britain between 1979 and 1982—the fifth in his series of national micro-histories starting in the 1950s ... As always, Sandbrook is attuned as much to popular culture as high politics—Fawlty Towers and Brideshead Revisited were, in their way, as important as the miners’ strike."
Books of the Year, Prospect
"Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands War, Northern Ireland, civil unrest, Duran Duran, snooker and a truly revolutionary act: Marks & Spencer’s invention of the pre-packaged sandwich"
Books of the Year, Mail on Sunday
"A richly satisfying historical feast"
Francis Wheen, Literary Review
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