A new photography book, Britain in the 1930s: A Photographic Journey Through an Extraordinary Decade of Change, is published on 5 November 2026. Written by historian Steven Brindle with Maureen Hill, the 616-page hardback brings together more than 600 black-and-white photographs of Britain between the wars.

The book is published by Atlantic Publishing and costs £50.

A nation between old and new

The photographs cover every corner of the country, from Cornwall to Orkney and Cardiff to Derry. They show a Britain caught between tradition and modernity. Hop picking in Kent, sheep being driven to market in Dunbartonshire and geese for sale in Ripon market sit alongside new suburbs, factories, cinemas and motor cars.

There are images of working women leaving the Stork Margarine factory at Bromborough and packing herring at Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The book also captures the golden age of the British seaside, with crowded beaches from Margate to New Brighton and Bournemouth. Other pictures include lidos, a man-made beach at the foot of Tower Bridge, and civic buildings such as Manchester’s Central Library, opened in 1934.

The publisher describes it as a reflection of JB Priestley’s idea of “three Englands”. These are the ancient country of cathedrals and villages, the industrial Britain built by the Victorians, and the new world of suburbs, cinemas and motor cars.

The photographers behind the archive

Most of the images come from the archive of Associated Newspapers. They’re supplemented by pictures from Getty Images’ Hulton and Keystone collections. Photographers featured include James Dixon-Scott, who set out to record landscapes and ways of life he felt were disappearing, and the architectural photographer Anthony Frank Kersting. The book also includes panoramic landscape work by Will F. Taylor and the painterly, naturally lit architectural images of Leo Herbert Felton.

Steven Brindle spent almost 40 years with English Heritage as a historian and Inspector of Ancient Monuments. He is also known as a leading authority on Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Our take

Books like this are a reminder of how much photography records beyond its subject. Many of these pictures were made on large and medium format film for newspapers and publishers, not as art. Nearly a century later, they’re a remarkable record of how people lived, worked and spent their holidays. For anyone shooting black-and-white film today, it’s also a great source of inspiration for documentary and street work closer to home.

Britain in the 1930s details