Teaser Tuesday – After the Victorians by A N Wilson

Published on by Margaret

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) ‘teaser’ sentences from that page.

At long last I’ve finished reading After the Victorians: the World Our Parents Knew by A N Wilson.after-the-victorians

It’s a remarkable book and I’ve learnt so much from it. I began reading it in April when I wrote that it would probably take me until September to read it all – I finished it this morning.

This passage is from page 512 writing about Aneurin Bevan and the setting up of the National Health Service:

Apart from his eloquence, and his wit, which inspired so many who heard his oratory both on the hustings and in the House of Commons, he was that very, very rare thing in the history of politics, a man whose decisions on behalf of those he served brought about human betterment. This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and human wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.  The National Health Service, which inspired so many other countries in the world to imitate it, did what it set out to do, and with all its many mistakes and short-comings, it still does so: it provides free medicine, free advice, free surgery, free nursing to everyone, regardless of their income.

I shall write in more detail about this book in a later post.

8 thoughts on “Teaser Tuesday – After the Victorians by A N Wilson”

  8. Reading this I realize that I know nothing about Bevan at all, which is shameful. I’m looking forward to your review. I’m close to finishing my own equivalent, which is a biography of Francis Partridge and will need something to replace it. This might fit the bill.

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