Well written and interesting, but perhaps a bit careless with sources
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One of Pugh's frequently-cited surces is Bryan Magee's Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood (2004). The book covers the period between the two wars and quotes from this autobiography as substantiation for many assertions. However, Magee was born in April, 1930. Magee has many gifts and is a man of considerable intellectual ability. Even so, his earliest memories of his childhood are likely to have been after 1933, and one wonders just how these recollections can be applied to the period 1918 - 1939. Neverthess, I enjoyed the book and thought it was mostly very good; I would have appreciated more awareness of just how different the 1920s were from the 1930s.
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Social History of the Twenties and Thirties
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Martin Pugh has amassed a great deal of information about the attitudes and social mores of the ordinary people throughout Britain in the Twenties and Thirties and made it accessible and even enjoyable. The 'celebrities' such as the Duff-Coopers and the Mountbattens are there, but the strength of the book lies in the insights it gives into the lives of ordinary people going about their work and leisure. There is rigour as references are scrupulously given, but there is also an easy and friendly style which makes the 400 plus pages pass quite quickly.
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