There are in fact two David Kynastons. One is the relatively conventional historian who has given us solid and illuminating accounts of the City of London, the Bank of England, the Financial Times and much else. The other is the venturesome innovator engaged in cutting up the rich history of post-war Britain into quite thin slices, and retailing news stories and contemporary comments, often on a day-by-day basis, to give the vivid flashback into how things were, and were felt, at the time . Applying his usual striking technique, Kynaston places such life-changing trends in the context of innumerable and contrasting contemporary incidents and comments, remind us of what people had on their minds . What of Kynaston's grand project as a whole? The first part of Modernity Britain and its successor will see the story through to 1962 - the halfway mark in Kynaston's planned 32-year-long saga - so we may expect a final total of 12 volumes. Some have compared it to The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, and it certainly has affinities with Anthony Powell's series of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time . In any case, we can look forward to more of a stimulating and refreshing achievement.