Reading in the 1950s

In Reading: The 1950s Stuart Hylton gives a fascinating account of the town and its people during a decade of rapid and memorable change. The book recalls how television and labour-saving appliances revolutionised the home, and how the motor car began to dominate travel and to alter the character of the town. It shows too how launderettes, multistory carparks and other innovations were regarded with suspicion or as miracles of modern technology. But the author also records aspects of Reading that stayed much the same - the courage and humour of the townspeople in sometimes trying circumstances, the ingenuity and the incompetence of the criminal classes, the absurdities of officialdom, and the sheer diversity of local life as it emerges from reports in the press. His story captures the spirit of the population during an era of bewildering development and change, and his book reminds us that the values and attitudes of 1950s Reading belong to a world that is vastly different to our own.

Stuart Hylton, born and bred in Berkshire, worked as a town planner in Reading from 1980 to 1998, where he eventually became Head of Planning and Environmental Health and Head of Strategic Planning and Transport for all Berkshire's local authorities. He is the author of 16 books on historical subjects and has written several titles on Reading, where he now lives.