1930's settings?

[SaagMasala]

Please may I ask if anyone has any suggestions for books set in the 1930's, in an industrial town?

NOT Catherine Cookson please, I'd like a different perspective.

Novels or non-fiction, anything that really gives the feel of those times.

Especially if it mentions current events, and (eg) whether what was happening in Germany was of much concern to the average British family.

The first part of George Orwell's 'The road to Wigan Pier' (non-fiction) might help with the industrial town and feel for those times, I don't know whether it mentions current events.
Here is the wikipedia entry on the book.

The Cazalet chronicles by Elizabeth Howard?

Oh sorry, they're not exactly industrial!

Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood, surely if you want a 30s set novel of life in an industrial town.

Some of Beryl Kingston books are set in that period.

Avalanche of Daisies
London Pride
Alive and Kicking

ooh I've never read Love on the Dole, I think I'd better find a copy!

I forgot about Wigan Pier, I read that yonks ago so its probably due a review.

There's Winifred Holtby's South Riding.

Not set in an industrial town as such, but in a small town and among the people affected by poverty (eldest daughter can't take up place in grammar school, as family can't afford to lose her domestic work).

Can't remember how much, if at all, it discusses 1930's Germany - but Holt by was certainly very aware and a member of the League of Nations Union (she died in 1935).

I've not come across Beryl Kingston, so I'll look out for those too.

Again, not in an industrial town, but Dorothy L Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels have a constant background patter of awareness throughout the 1930s.

I remember South Riding being on the TV, so I will add that to the reading list as well.

I'm not complaining by Ruth Adams. Can't remember if it talks about Germany but is about a teacher in an industrial town in Nottinghamshire I think in the 1930s.

You might also find the British Newspaper Archive helpful: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

I find browsing local newspapers of the time gives a very good feel for what's being discussed, and in what terms. In between the prizes for begonias, prosecutions for theft or drunkeness, and retirement presentations for district nurses, of course!

There's a fair bit of Welsh 1930s fiction about agriculture giving way to industry, like How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewelyn and Cwmardy by Lewis Jones. Or Phyllis Bentley's Inheritance, which is set against a backdrop of the textile industry in the west riding of Yorkshire? I think there are also a couple of sequels to it. Dot Allan's Hunger March, set in Glasgow?

I remember coming across one local paper with a very self-congratulatory article on the fact that Britain had given a home to Professor Einstein, saved from those unappreciative Nazi scoundrels.

Alas I didn't bookmark it and can't remember the date, but obviously 1930s.

(Have just searched the archive: Einstein's arrival 1933, reported in local papers from the Dundee Evening Telegraph to the Gloucester Citizen and the Ballymena Observer. So clearly an item of interest.)

How Green Was My Valley

About a Welsh community that basically turns into a series of slag piles as their mines become more industrialised.

Beautiful but very sad.

Margaret Forster wrote a fab book about Carrs Biscuit factory in Carlisle which certainly covered that period,

and certainly covered who went off to the war and the effects on trade etc.

The Citadel by AJ Cronin?

There's Helen Forrester's autobiography, Twopence to Cross the Mersey, about childhood in 1930s Liverpool. (I haven't read her novels, which might be on similar.)

Don't know if that's too similar to Cookson?

thanks for the suggestions, looks like I'm going to be busy over the next couple of weeks!

The Road to Nab End: A Lancashire Childhood by William Woodruff

I really enjoyed it.

There are several Margaret Forster books which would fit your spec. The only one that jumps to mind immediately is Hidden Lives, about her secretive mother's background.

But there are several set in industrial towns and cities, and many relate to the big political stories or economic situations of the period in which they are set.