Sixty. And Nobody Warned You

Sixty years read from the other side, and the years where the difference is not a matter of tone. A woman turning sixty was born into a country where she could be refused a mortgage in her own name, and the tables in this edition carry that rather than averaging it away.

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

What makes the women's sixtieth different from the men's?

The same six decades, and a different set of things that changed during them. The wage pages carry the gap of the period rather than one average, and the what-has-changed section deals with the accounts, mortgages and jobs that were not available to a woman in her own right for part of her own lifetime.

Is it a book about ageing?

No. There is nothing in it about knees, hair or being baffled by a phone. Those are the jokes that get this kind of book three stars from the person it was given to. The material is the sixty years, not the sixty-year-old.

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. The register is printed in the back.