{"id":7541,"date":"2017-09-04T11:34:52","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T11:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7541"},"modified":"2017-09-07T11:42:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T11:42:07","slug":"joining-the-dots-by-juliet-gardiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7541","title":{"rendered":"Joining the Dots by Juliet Gardiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Woman In Her Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by William Collins 10 August 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

208pp, hardback, \u00a316.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Jessica\u00a0 Mann<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Juliet Gardiner\u2019s time\u00a0has been my time too, and I recognize almost everything she describes, for although I am a few years her senior, she began adult life so early \u2013 married at seventeen, a mother at nineteen \u2013 that in experience we seem to be contemporaries. Here are the familiar details that so many women born before and during World War II remember \u00a0about life in the nineteen fifties and sixties:\u00a0 the terror of pregnancy, \u00a0inconvenient rubber contraceptives, \u00a0\u00a0brusque male gynecologists; we trembled through the Cuban missile crisis and took a keen interest in\u00a0 nuclear disarmament. At home we taught ourselves to cook\u00a0using the same recipe books, and learnt to look after our babies guided by the same (male) gurus. Above all we grew up with and hardly questioned the fact that we were second-class citizens. It took a long time, a sizeable proportion of our lives,\u00a0for women\u00a0\u2018to be considered codeterminants with men in the historical narratives\u2019.<\/p>\n

Born in 1943 to a single mother who named her Olivia, the child spent two years in a children\u2019s home before she was adopted and renamed Gillian. \u2018My adoption was not terribly successful. My mother and I were a disappointment to each other.\u2019 A clever child, Olivia\/Gillian passed the eleven plus exam and went to Berkhamsted, a highly academic girls\u2019 day school, but she walked out of it at the age\u00a0of sixteen, and at just seventeen married George Gardiner.<\/p>\n

Soon, as mother to three small children, having realized that she was \u2018free to self-identify and construct my own persona\u2019, Gillian changed her name to Juliet, took\u00a0A-levels as a mature student, spent three years as an undergraduate \u00a0at University College London, and then signed on for a PhD.<\/p>\n

Her husband, George Gardiner, became a Conservative parliamentary candidate and Juliet opened fetes, gave talks to women\u2019s groups\u00a0and pretended to support her husband\u2019s policies. In fact their irreconcilable political differences loomed ever larger as Juliet matured, and they divorced when their three children were of primary-school age. Juliet took the first steps that would lead to her becoming a well-known historian, a regular broadcaster and the author of numerous books, many devoted\u00a0to the domestic and social history of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

She mentions only two jobs, the first\u00a0as deputy editor of History\u00a0Today<\/em>, the second as its influential editor.<\/p>\n

Every chapter in this book contains scholarly accounts of life in\u00a0Juliet\u2019s time. Though obviously a feminist she was never an activist. It is\u00a0observing and explaining, academic analysis, objective historical narrative and discussion,\u00a0that come naturally to her. \u00a0The\u00a0personal details read as if they had been wrenched by force from a reluctant witness.<\/p>\n

Five years ago Juliet Gardiner was diagnosed with cancer. She has undergone radiotherapy and chemotherapy, been in and out of hospital, forced herself to accept that she is terminally ill. After a career of publishing\u00a0work based on detailed research, which she can no longer do, Juliet decided to write a book for which she had to be her own source and resource. The result is a historian\u2019s history that will be quoted by other historians for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Jessica Mann<\/p>\n

Here are the familiar details that so many women born before and during World War II remember about life in the nineteen fifties and sixties: the terror of pregnancy, inconvenient rubber contraceptives, brusque male gynecologists; we trembled through the Cuban missile crisis and took a keen interest in nuclear disarmament. At home we taught ourselves to cook using the same recipe books, and learnt to look after our babies guided by the same (male) gurus. Above all we grew up with and hardly questioned the fact that we were second-class citizens […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7551,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7541\/revisions\/7551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}