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At the beginning of the 1950s, Leicester was an industrial city picking itself up from the debris of the Second World War. Compared with nearby Coventry, Leicester has been a relatively safe place, but the effects of the Blitz were still very evident in New Walk and in the residential areas of Highfields and Stoneygate. After years of operating on a wartime economy, Leicester's major industries - textiles, hosiery and machine tools - faced the challenge of returning to domestic production, and in assimilating a large male workforce returning from the battlefields of Europe and beyond to civilian life. In Leicester in the 1950s, Stephen Butt traces the vibrant lives of those recovering from the destruction of the Second World War.

This is the third volume in a unique and exciting series on the modern history of York. With the dawning of the 1970s the city underwent seismic changes that saw it become one of Europe's foremost historical and cultural cities. Tourism had come to stay, with such major events as the pedestrianisation of Stonegate, the opening of the world-famous National Railway Museum, the momentous excavations in Coppergate, which paved the way for the celebrated Jorvik Viking Centre, and the opening of the Minster undercroft to the public. Join Paul Chrystal as he describes and depicts all of these and many more fascinating details about York during this pivotal decade in the city's splendid history.

EDINBURGH in the 1950s was a very different place. After the ravages of war, the International Festival and Military Tattoo was introduced as an antidote to post-war austerity, the new Civic Survey and Plan put forward grandiose recommendations for change, and a new young Queen visited the city. This was a time when slum housing was a blight on many people's lives, but there was a real sense of community that was ultimately lost in the move to sparkling, modern homes in the new housing estates. People continued to use the trams to travel to work in the many factories or make trips to Portobello for a day of fun, but they were slowly usurped by the car. It was a glory period for the local football teams, and nights spent dancing or at the pictures were a weekly event. There was still the horse-drawn milk float and children played in streets that were lit by gas. Beautifully illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs, Edinburgh in the 1950s provides an exceptional insight into a time now acknowledged as the end of an era in Edinburgh - for good and for bad.

Norwich in 1950 was a different place. Still scarred by war the city was coming to terms with itself. Children played in the rubble of bomb sites, and workers strove to build a prosperous peace on building sites. By the end of the decade the retail heart of the city would be reconstructed, new building programmes would be changing domestic life, and the manufacturing industries would be making world-class products with household names. Birthplace of Barclays, Aviva, Start-Rite and Colmans, the city was ready to embark on another chapter in its long history of commercial and cultural development. From post-war austerity to the threshold of the consumer society, Norwich embraced the 1950s as a decade of change.

The 1950s in York was a decade of reconstruction and regeneration after the depredations of the Second World War. This book charts these changes to give a unique picture of the city that gradually emerged over the years 1950-59. It covers developments in the railway and confectionery industries that provided the foundation for growth and prosperity - the changing face of trade on the high street; the growth of tourism; the role of the media in the city; music, cinema, theatre and entertainment; schools, colleges and hospitals in the city; and York City FC. Using archive material from The York Press, York City Archives and the prestigious Borthwick Institute at the University of York, this book provides a unique history of York in an often forgotten decade, forgotten even though it provides the bedrock for much of what we see today.

The 1950s. The mid-point of the twentieth century. When those born in the nineteenth century met their grandchildren who would live in the twenty-first. A pivotal moment, certainly. And is it really true? Had we 'never had it so good', as Prime Minister Macmillan said?This book is the story of Swansea in those years, when post-war austerity moved towards the indulgence of the sixties. A period of affluence and full employment, a time of increased confidence and optimism. A time when Swansea began to rebuild itself after terrible wartime devastation and looked to a bright future, despite an exhausted valley where the trains crept slowly between the twisted slag heaps alongside a poisoned river. Everything would soon be so much better. The future was so brightSwansea in the 1950s follows the development of Swansea through this momentous decade. The story of how Swansea played its own part in the big news of the era - the Coronation, the Atom Bomb, Rock Around the Clock, the Korean War, Sputnik, the Suez Crisis and television, - and how it managed its own triumphs and disasters.

As the fifties faded away, sixties style swept Chester into the modern age.