Heatwave
The Summer of 1976 – Britain at Boiling Point. A BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week.
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Standard 30-day free trial
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Heatwave
Narrated by:
Matt Addis
Buy Now for £17.94
-
Narrated by:
-
Matt Addis
-
By:
-
John L Williams
About this listen
'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
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.'
Left wing look at recent history, doesn’t like British people or culture
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent Memories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant researched and told
Totally apt for this summer
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very disappointing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.