Kate Atkinson seems to like writing about societies in transition, sometimes on the edge of total collapse. The focus here is on the post-Second World War years and England is a strange place. So many people have died and so many others have returned damaged. Relationships are chancy and the fruits of victory are simply not visible. Step forward the Festival of Britain and a plan to re-energise society by celebrating the past and the country’s talents.

Harry Flynn is in recovery from a bad war as a journalist which ended in the hell of the Burma railway, before things got even worse with an unwise marriage to a war widow plus serious post traumatic shock, all ongoing until an old friend propels him into working on the planning for the Festival in 1949.

He is working with a strange group of misfits, all trying not to talk too much about the war in which they mostly ‘served’ in some capacity or other. There are, as you might expect with Kate Atkinson, quite a few spies and people who are not what they seem so, even as Harry works on the Festival, he is being set up and nearly ends up in jail!

It might not sound like it, but all of this is darkly funny and there are plenty of competing plots as other characters reveal, or possibly don’t, their true natures. The Festival planning is chaotic with blind alleys, odd choices of what to ‘celebrate’ and a ragbag of driving spirits and much of this is how it really was. This book is well researched as well as funny!

However, its real achievement is the picture it paints of this strange time when peace and prosperity was still a dream. The festival was a success in terms of visitors and replicated in regional celebrations but it is worth remembering that in 1951, the Korean ‘Emergency’ led to the deaths of another four thousand young men, including the massacre of most of the Gloucestershire regiment at the Imjin River. Meanwhile, the PM Clement Atlee claimed to know only that Korea was somewhere between China and Japan and the new NHS was forced to introduce dental charges and fees for glasses to fund the war. Aneurin Bevan resigned to his credit.

It was a strange time and Kate Atkinson explores it with real style and panache. It’s a great read from one of the greatest living storytellers.