By Ella Beales
Robert Garner’s Landslide is a partly fictionalised account of the 1945 General Election. This unconventional approach, known as creative non-fiction*, combines extensive historical research with the literary techniques of fiction.
Whilst Garner uses dialogue, scene-setting, character development and a clear narrative arc, Landslide remains grounded in historical evidence. He explicitly acknowledges any departures from the historical record, including the fictionalisation of one character based on several real people whose experiences appear in the Mass Observation diaries. This openness is reassuring, particularly given that the book frequently reads like a novel, and without such clarification the boundary between historical evidence and creative reconstruction risks becoming blurred.
Rather than inundating readers with statistics, party manifestos and the actions of political leaders, Garner reconstructs the experiences of those who watched the election unfold from outside the political elite. Although the focus is on ordinary people and their experiences of the election, Garner also spends time with key political figures as they confront changes to their personal and political futures. To achieve such a deeply grounded account, Landslide draws extensively on diaries, autobiographies, biographies and, in particular, material from the Mass Observation Archive.
Garner’s extensive use of Mass Observation diaries and File Reports provides glimpses into the excitement, uncertainty, exhaustion and sometimes indifference surrounding the election. Giving such prominence to ‘ordinary people’s’ voices is particularly valuable in ensuring greater representation of women, whose political experiences can easily disappear from accounts focused on elite figures. Kathleen Tipper, represented in the book as Kathleen Barrett, offers the perspective of a woman interested in politics but not politically active herself. Through Kathleen, Garner explores the limited career opportunities available to women before the war, the changing social environment created by the war, and the significance of voting for the first time. Her character also facilitates an exploration of how the war changed British society: through her, we see the arrival of large numbers of American GIs and their impact on social and sexual behaviour, whilst her volunteering demonstrates how wartime experiences could temporarily reduce social barriers. Meanwhile Naomi’s observations capture the exhaustion beneath the VE Day celebrations. Together, these perspectives demonstrate that the 1945 election did not happen in isolation, but was shaped by the extraordinary social and economic experiences of the preceding six years.
Placing ordinary people’s experiences at the forefront of this book makes the election feel considerably more tangible. Garner provides vivid descriptions of the physical world of 1940s Britain, from clothing and telephones to Churchill’s cane and the distinctive noise it makes as he walks. These details establish a strong sense of time and place without lengthy explanation, allowing the narrative to retain its momentum. Where further context is required, Garner uses his characters’ experiences and dialogue to explain how ordinary people encountered the war and immediate post-war life.
Garner cleverly places the narratives of Churchill and Attlee alongside these ordinary experiences, revealing both the public and private dimensions of the election campaign. Interestingly, neither appears confident that their party will win. Their inclusion also provides insight into the political decisions which led to the election, including disagreements over the continuation of the wartime coalition, and Churchill’s reasoning for calling an early election.
The chaos of the campaign and election process is also made clear, from paper shortages to voters being unsure whether they were registered in the correct constituency following the population movements of the war. These details reinforce the extent to which Britain was still dealing with the consequences of the conflict when the election took place.
One of the key questions Landslide attempts to answer is: why did Labour win such a dramatic landslide in 1945? Garner makes it clear that voters were not simply deciding which party should govern, but what kind of country they wanted Britain to become after the war. Wartime government made state intervention in people’s lives far more familiar and acceptable. This, alongside the public’s enthusiasm for the Beveridge Report and the success of Labour’s emphasis on issues such as housing, shows that the election was less a rejection of Churchill and more a transformation in expectations about the responsibilities of the state.
It was particularly fascinating to read Garner’s comparisons between the 1945 election and the political environment surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. In both cases, a Conservative Prime Minister responded to an international crisis with an unusually interventionist approach involving substantial government spending. Garner suggests that crises can fundamentally alter what voters consider politically acceptable. This is a clever comparison, providing contemporary readers with a familiar reference point through which to understand the political transformation of 1945.
Landslide’s greatest success is in making a familiar, but often academic, historical event feel surprisingly new and accessible. Garner’s use of Mass Observation material, combining political history with the perspectives of ordinary people, allows readers to understand the election’s importance within wider changes in British society and expectations of government. The book does not simply explain what happened in 1945, but what it felt like to be there. It is an excellent introduction for those with little knowledge of the 1945 General Election, whilst also offering an important reminder to political historians of the value of voices too often absent from conventional political histories. Such an approach would not be possible without the Mass Observation Archive’s extensive collection of diaries and File Reports.
*Garner uses the following definition of creative non-fiction: ‘a story of actual people and actual events told with the dramatic technique of a novel.’