Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain

“Charlotte Greenhalgh’s Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain makes a signal contribution to modern British history by recovering the lives, voices, and agency of the elderly in the twentieth century. It is an acute and moving account of people who have been, until now, largely left out of the historical narrative.”—Stephen Brooke, author of Sexual Politics: Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day

“Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain is an outstanding history of the emotional, social, institutional, family, embodied, and narrated lives of older people across twentieth-century Britain. It demonstrates not just that older lives matter historically but also that old age is itself historically contingent and has been actively constituted in tandem with particular welfare and medical discourses. This is an important and innovative book based on meticulous scholarship and a sensitive reading of sources.”—Claire Langhamer, author of The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution
 
“This important and highly original book takes the history of both old age and social research in new directions. Imaginative and innovative throughout, it is particularly noteworthy for offering a careful reanalysis of the social research testimony collected directly from elderly people in the past. The result is that these people’s lives are understood on their own terms, rather than through the prism of social policy debates or the claims of social science experts.”—Jon Lawrence, author of Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair