2025 was my year of WWI. I decided to spend nine months of the year (spring, summer, and autumn) reading everything I owned and could find on the subject. Concentrating on a single period allows you to get under its skin and explore it from multiple viewpoints. I read history books, memoirs, and novels, and went from knowing very little about the war to having a reasonably good appreciation. I’ve now committed to following this pattern each year, and so it seemed obvious to spend the same nine months of 2026 reading everything I could find about the interwar period, 1918 to 1939. I expect my reading list is now too long for the time I’ve assigned for it, but I shall do my best to read as much as possible. Again it’s a mixture of history books, memoirs, and novels. This book, AJP Taylor’s England 1914 to 1945 is the first book from this list. What better to start the project than with a good overall history that also includes the first and second world wars which book-end the period. I discovered the book while looking for interwar history works that were written nearer the period. This was first published in 1965, the year I was born, and only 20 years after the period it covers concludes. It’s a very nicely produced Folio Society volume from 2000 in perfect condition that I bought from eBay.

Alan John Percivale Taylor (1906 - 1990) was a leading 20th century historian and broadcaster. His uncle was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and Taylor was also a member during his youth. He later repudiated communism, but stayed a life long member of the Labour Party. He was often controversial, describing the Irish potato famine as “genocide” carried out by the British ruling class, and Hitler as a typical German statesman, with historical justifications for starting WWII. This book is, however, generally regarded as being a balanced and fair account of the period it covers. It was his best selling work and enormously popular at the time. He was obviously very proud to be British, despite the criticisms of government policy, especially towards Ireland, and this book is a very affectionate portrait of the country. There should be a word for a history book written about a period within the author’s lifetime. “Autohistory” perhaps? Taylor lived through all the events he describes, and was an active political actor, especially in the later half, so the book something of a memoir too.

I loved the opening paragraph of the book, describing how before the first world war, an Englishman could go through life with almost no contact with the state. This all changed with WWI as the state grew rapidly in size in response to the demands for ever more war material and constraints on imports and manpower. This is all now familiar history to me after spending last year reading everything I could find about the war, but it is still sobering to be reminded how recklessly Haig, Kitchener, and Lloyd George squandered the lives of the British soldiers in a strategically pointless frontal assaults on the German lines. Taylor is very critical, but not controversial, since this was a widely held opinion in the 1960s, although much revised now. After reading both Simon Heffer and Max Hasting’s books on WWI, both tories, it was enlightening to get a left-wing account. He’s much kinder to Lloyd George and far more critical of Haig and the generals. He’s also very sympathetic to the notion that a negotiated peace was a possibility that should have been persuaded more energetically.

In the immediate post-WWI period Lloyd-George was still PM and there was a brief post-war economic boom. Taylor gives lots of detail on labour relations and the negotiations over peace and reparations. He describes 1922 as a return to normality. Life was better for most than at any time previously, especially for the poorer end of society, as union power pushed up wages and the first green shoots of the welfare state began to emerge. As always the intellectuals were miserable and foresaw the end of civilisation. Their equivalent of social-media was the arrival of cinema and recorded music. Taylor describes the great British export of the period as Charlie Chaplin.

The remainder of the 1920s appear as something of a golden age. He details the brief Ramsay MacDonald minority Labour government of 1924 followed by the nearly five years of Stanley Baldwin’s conservatives. There is more about Labour relations, especially the miners, who were the largest single employed group, of over 1 million at the time, and the main protagonists of the general strike of 1926. The Labour government returned in 1929, again as a minority in parliament. Soon various political shenanigans lead to Ramsay MacDonald being ejected from the Labour party and becoming leader of the National, mainly Conservative, government of ‘29 to ‘35. It’s interesting how peaceful the international situation appeared at this time, with no hint of WWII on the horizon. With the perspective of hindsight we see the 20s and 30s as a brief peaceful sandwich filling between the world wars, but at the time it must have felt like the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity. He gives a very good overview of culture and society as the 20s transitioned to the 30s; the rise of cinema and radio, the expanding ownership of cars, the growth of suburbs and a “third England” of middle class salary earners.

Taylor focuses on the domestic and international policies of the UK government between 1931 and 1936. The country saw a substantial economic rebound after the great depression, but with persistent unemployment in mining, shipbuilding, and textile areas, despite the growth in more modern sectors such as cars and electronics. International relations returned to the center of government concerns, with debate about pursuing peace with disarmament verses re-armament in the face of aggressive powers like Japan and Nazi Germany. Many on the Labour left took a hard-line pacifist view, which with hindsight looks particularly self-indulgent. There’s a very good chapter on appeasement from 1936 to 1938. Neville Chamberlain was a well meaning practical statesman, who simply couldn’t understand that Adolf Hitler thirsted for war, and that no amount of compromise would satisfy him. Very interesting how much foreign affairs dominated politics at that time, and how different attitudes to rearmament and appeasement were the main political faultlines.

Taylor provides a very dramatic description of the start of WWII. It really brought home how desperate the decision to go to war was, when, at the time there was so little Britain and France could do. Hitler’s invasions had all been to the east, and with Russia’s intervention on Germany’s side, with the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, the only possible course of action for Britain and France was a full scale assault on Germany’s western frontier, which neither were in any position to make. It seemed all of Britain’s hopes rested on a very leaky economic blockade, which became even more ineffective once Denmark and Norway were lost. All very familiar, but interesting to read from Taylor’s perspective in the 1960s when it was recent history and hadn’t yet evolved into the national myth that it is today. It’s notable how impressed Taylor is with the British government’s conduct of the war. Even with the huge military commitment, the population was better paid, better fed, healthier and happier than at any previous time in British history. It was run on fully socialist lines with price controls and government mandated allocation of resources. Of course it was all done without regard to cost and was bankrolled by the US. He regrets that some of the innovations, such as the regional directorships, were not kept after the war. He describes Britain’s complete dependence on the US by the end of the war and its demotion from the first rank of world powers but ends on quite a positive note, saying that WWII saw England move from an imperial power to a social power. The government became more democratic and took far better care of its people. But there’s no doubt that to this day we struggle with our place in the world - witness the ridiculous Brexit vote.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s superbly well written; engaging, witty, and opinionated. Everything one wants from a good history book. He covers 31 years in 520 pages, so it’s quite a light overview. I’ve read widely on both world wars, so those chapters were all very familiar territory, but it was still interesting to get Taylor’s opinionated point of view. It made me think again about various aspects, especially the lost chances for a negotiated peace in WWI, and the courage Churchill and the country displayed in 1940 when everything seemed hopeless. My main reason for reading the book was to get a good overview of the interwar period which it provided very nicely. There were huge economic and social changes between 1918, when the country was still Edwardian in many ways, and 1939 when it had become recognisably modern. The eclipse of the Liberal party and the rise of Labour is perhaps a lesson for our times as both Tories and Labour are threatened by challengers. It’s also worrying also how quickly the apparently stable and peaceful international situation of the 1920s morphed into the deepening catastrophe of the late 30s. Another sobering lesson for our time.