The 1970s was a turbulent decade in Britain: the era of Empire was over, the economy was in chaos, there was frequent industrial action which resulted in power cuts, shortages of staple foods such as butter, and disruptions to refuse collections. There were a number of terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain with tragic loss of life. Politics was a mess and the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 would be the start of eighteen years of Conservative government. Some parts of the country, for example areas where mines were shut down in the 1980s, would forever be scarred by its effects.
Culturally it was also a very mixed time. There was the nihilism of punk, and in particular The Sex Pistols. There was also the rise of disco with its sense of escapism and hedonism. The Queen commemorated her silver jubilee in 1977, an event I remember well, but which, looking back, seems to be so out of place in the context of the social, economic and political climate. Perhaps one might say the same about the platinum jubilee.
Looking back on the books I have enjoyed from this period I find that there are few noteworthy British choices. But there were some classics coming out of the Americas – Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1970, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice in 1979 and Alex Haley’s Roots in 1976 – it’s extraordinary to me to think this was the first time I became aware of the slave trade. Its adaptation for television in 1977 was a landmark cultural event of the small screen. Toni Morrison published her debut novel The Bluest Eye in 1970 and by the time of her third in 1977, Song of Solomon, she was award winning and critically acclaimed.
I read none of these amazing books in the 1970s as I was still very young. By the time Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister (an event greeted with great apprehension in my home) I was 11 years old and I remember thinking that I might potentially be leaving school before she was gone!
My reading material evolved during this decade and some of my favourite books were James Herriot’s stories of life as a vet in North Yorkshire, starting with If Only They Could Talk in 1970. These books made me want to be a vet and I might have become one had someone not told me at a careers fair in the mid-1980s that I should probably pick an alternative career since it was hard to get into university and only people from good schools had a realistic chance… Ah, those were the days!
I want to say that feminist icon Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) was the biggest book for me from this decade, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. It’s going to be another white male, and another animal story – Watership Down by Richard Adams, published in 1972. This unique and powerful novel shaped much of my political (with a small ‘p’) thinking, my awareness of environmental issues and of animal rights, as did his other much darker novel The Plague Dogs (1977). I must have read the book around the time the film came out in 1978. It also led me to becoming a big fan of Simon and Garfunkel.
A strange decade indeed and not rich in literary output in Britain.
Julia's books 