Seventy. And Nobody Warned You

Seventy years of prices is the widest gap in the series and it needs no commentary at all. This edition gives the tables the most room and the jokes the least, on the grounds that a man who has watched a house go from four figures to six does not need it explained to him.

What is in it

• The years you could have been born, and what a house, a week of work and a pound actually cost in each of them.
• What has changed since, with the figures rather than the sighing.
• The honest bits about the age, written by somebody not pretending it is fine.
• Quizzes and things to argue about.
• Things you can now say and get away with.
• Around forty pages to fill in, which is the part that survives.

Formats and price

Part of Milestone Birthdays, an Home Truths series.

Frequently asked

Is a seventieth birthday book going to be about being old?

No. There is nothing in it about knees, hearing or technology, which is the standard material here and the reason these books get given and quietly shelved. It is about the seventy years, and the seventy years are genuinely remarkable on the numbers alone.

Is the writing-in part realistic for a seventieth?

It is the part that gets used most. About a third of the book is blank and prompted, and a reader with seventy years to draw on fills it in a way a thirty-year-old cannot. Several of the prompts are written for somebody reading it later rather than the person answering.

Is every fact in it sourced?

Yes, to the Nationwide house price index, the Bank of England historical dataset, the Office for National Statistics and the Official Charts Company, printed in the back.