Katrina Gulliver

On with the new

India and the Middle East were certainly transformed. But there were many other watershed years in the past century

issue 02 December 2017

  • 1947: When Now Begins

    Elizabeth Åsbrink, translated from the Swedish by Fiona Graham

    Scribe, pp. 288

I grew up knowing 1947 as the year of my father’s birth, in a black-and-white faraway time. I was told about rationing and petrol coupons, as yet another chapter in the long book of ‘how good you have it now’ — along with chilblains, measles, castor oil and walking ten miles to school neck deep in snow, uphill both ways.

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