Heatwave

The Summer of 1976 – Britain at Boiling Point. A BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week.

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Heatwave

By: John L Williams

Narrated by: Matt Addis

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BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

'A teeming chronicle of those scorching months. Superbly researched.' THE TIMES

'Scorching, animated and essential reading. Superb.' THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Grippingly captures the three months that shook Britain's cultural landscape' PAULINE BLACK

'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. I lived through those cruel months, and Williams recreates them with intense skill' SIMON GARFIELD

'An absolute joy' PETE PAPHIDES

'Engrossing...powerful...goes way beyond nostalgia' DAVID KYNASTON

With temperatures soaring to 35ºC, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the standpipes, the summer of 1976 was always remembered as Britain's hottest.

But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads.

Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together - as long as you were white, male and straight. In July, Tom Robinson writes a song called Glad to be Gay, and by August bank holiday, Black youth are making the police run for their lives in the almighty riot at the Notting Hill Carnival. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old world order, the weather seemed to boil up the country to the point where the lid blows off.

Weaving a rich tapestry of the news stories of the year, with social commentary and dozens of first-person interviews with those that were there at the time, Williams's reappraisal of the summer of '76 is an evocative, sometimes nostalgic but always an unflinching read. Heatwave takes us back to relive the events of that summer and asks - have we really moved on as much as we would have liked?©2025 John L Williams

Art

Europe

Great Britain

Social Sciences

Art Europe Great Britain Social Sciences

Critic reviews

'John L. Williams grippingly captures the three months that shook Britain's cultural landscape in 'Heatwave'. His use of highly entertaining and often devastating stories about the febrile atmosphere of 1976's extraordinarily hot summer, show how simmering community unrest, in a newly multicultural Britain, reached boiling point with the heavy-handed policing of the youth at the Notting Hill Carnival.' (Pauline Black)

'In this engrossing account of one utterly memorable summer, John L Williams goes way beyond nostalgia, as through a series of powerful stories - sometimes touching but often disturbing - he argues persuasively that these were the months that Britain started decisively to become the more open and fluid society we know today.' (David Kynaston)

'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. I lived through those cruel months, and Williams recreates them with intense skill.' (Simon Garfield)

'Thanks to a blend of forensic research and an eye for the most delicious details, John L Williams' deeply evocative dissection of this mythical moment in our collective memory is an absolute joy. Like the fumes of newspapers gently baking in the midday heat, I just wanted to keep inhaling it.' (Pete Paphides)

'If you like your nostalgia sugar-coated and rose-tinted, Heatwave isn't for you. Instead it offers as exhilarating and empowering a kick in the teeth as the times it describes, that epochal faultline in British cultural life between kaftans, Fred Perry shirts and bondage trousers.' (Martin Rowson)

'Scorching, animated and essential reading. Superb.'

'A teeming chronicle of those scorching months. Superbly researched... a book that is full of dry, ironic observations and has a much wider scope than the title suggests.'

Most relevant

The narrator had a rather boring voice. the narration would have benefitted by the addition of other voices for the different topics. At the start I loved this recording but it was all too samey after a while. However, it is a good reminder of the hot summer of 1976.