How the UK has changed in the last 70 years since the Queen took the throne

The last 70 years have been eventful and often difficult, but the UK is far wealthier than it was when the Queen took the throne in 1952. Simon Wilson reports.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh
The year of the Queen’s accession was the year that post-war tea rationing ended and Britain saw its first TV detector van.
(Image credit: © Getty)

What was life like in 1952?

The year of the Queen’s accession was the year that post-war tea rationing ended and Britain saw its first TV detector van. Few people could afford televisions, though, because they cost around £1,800 in today’s money – nor fridges, at around £1,000. It was the year the first music singles chart was published, the Flower Pot Men began broadcasting, and Agatha Christie’s new thriller The Mousetrap opened in the West End. Toxic smog killed 4,000 Londoners, while across the country tramways were being ripped up to make urban centres more accessible for motorcars. On average, Britons spent around 30% of their income on food, compared with 10% today.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.