Nick Hubble is Reader in English at Brunel University, UK. He has published extensively on contemporary literature and culture and is the author of Mass Observation and Everyday Life (2010).Jennie Taylor completed her PhD in History at the University of Sydney, Australia, and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Brunel University, UK. She has published on Mass Observation and leisure.Philip Tew is Professor of English at Brunel University, UK. He has published numerous books, including Zadie Smith (2009), Writers Talk (2008), and Well Done God! Selected Prose and Drama of B. S. Johnson, (2013).

• IntroductionPart I. The Interwar Generation1. Backgrounds2. ‘To me, life and work are linked’ - Ivy Miller 3. ‘I never stopped learning all my life’ - George Borrows4. ‘Mine has been a privileged generation’ - Ron Turpin 5. ‘People assume the elderly aren’t interested in sex’- Amy Saunders Part II. The Wartime Generation6: Backgrounds7. ‘Life is better than I could ever have imagined as a child’ - Joy Warren8. ‘An apprentice old dear’- Randall Jenkins 9: ‘Politicians need to chat up the older generation’ - Brenda Allen10. ‘The young do not have exclusive rights to love and happiness’ - Joanna Woods Afterword.Appendix: FCMAP, MO and the U3A

The eight autobiographies are very rich in detail, exploring poignant and tragic incidents in the authors’ lives as well as the aspects that provide them with joy or meaning ... Growing Old with the Welfare State will be of great importance to those working on experiences of ageing, citizenship, and welfare in Britain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It will also be highly valuable to historians and sociologists of emotions, intergenerational relations, and time.