I remember reading a few years ago that "experts" had declared the best year to have been born in the 20th century was 1948: financial, social and educational policies have worked very much in favour of our generation. Think state-funded university grants, growing up with the Beatles, the end of national service and the birth of the NHS; followed by final-salary pension schemes for many.
Here is a quote from an Ian McEwan novel written about a dozen years ago which, I believe, has even more relevance in today's austere times:
"How prosperous, how influential, how they had flourished under a government they had despised for almost 17 years. Talking 'bout my generation. Such energy, such luck. Nurtured in the post-war settlement with the State's own milk and juice, and then sustained by their parents' tentative, innocent prosperity, to come of age in full employment, new universities, bright paperback books, the Augustan age of rock and roll, affordable ideals. When the ladder crumbled behind them, when the State withdrew her tit and became a scold, they were already safe, they consolidated, and settled down to forming this or that - taste, opinion, fortunes."
Ian McEwan was born on 21 June, 1948.
Sent from my iPad
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