Dusty Wentworth

I sometimes think Britain’s come full circle — back to the seventies, only this time worse. I was young then, but the memories haven’t faded: petrol queues stretching down the road, power cuts that plunged whole streets into darkness, and my dad getting stopped at Heathrow with a suitcase full of sugar. We’d brought it home from Saudi Arabia, where he was working, because Britain had run short. My gran, who’d lived through the war, treated that sugar like treasure. Rationing made sense to her — she’d seen worse. To the rest of us, it felt like a country running out of everything, including hope. We had strikes, high inflation, and the three-day week. Yet there was still some fundamental faith in the future. People complained, but they worked, they coped. Communities held together. You could still believe Britain would somehow pull through. The Lion Wakes: Pride and Division Then came 1982. Argentina invaded the Falklands, thinking we wouldn’t respond. They misjudged us badl...