BBC2 series on Britain in the 1970s

BBC2 has a new series on Britain in the 1970s.
The series is based on Dominic Sandbrook's research for his books, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974 and Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979.

This is the series description from the BBC website:

"Historian Dominic Sandbrook presents the 1970s as a vital and exciting era in which the old Britain of the post-war years was transformed into the nation we see around us today.
Sandbrook is as interested in how ordinary people were changing Britain as he is in politicians. In this episode, he reveals a country brimming with aspiration as millions get on the property ladder, take their first foreign holidays and start to challenge the old class boundaries to their lives. It was a decade in which ordinary British people first felt the thrill of freedom and money, but Sandbrook shows us it was also a decade in which raging conflicts about the economy and Europe loomed large."

Here's a link to the first episode:
1. Get It On 70-72

Here's a link to the series' blog, where the historian and presenter of the tv series shares his experiences:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2012/04/the-70s.shtml

Athens Polytechnic Uprising

Thirty five years ago today the Athens Polytechnic uprising (info here and video here) ended in bloodshed.

This picture shows the tank that crushed the gates of the Polytechnic, stopped in front of the building. The picture was found at http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/november17.htm.





This is a copy of the Vradyni Athens daily reporting on the events on the following day. I found this on SKAI.gr website today; it is incorporated in a text commemorating the uprising.











The front page of the 18th November 1973 reminded me of another page of the same newspaper that I had come across in my research.

It is a cartoon published approximately a year before the November '73 events and it comments on Lord Carrington's visit to Athens in September 1972.

Lord Carrington was Defence Secretary at the time and his visit (the first one by a British minister under Heath) was presented to the public as 'unofficial', with his habit of holidaying in Greece used as a pretext.