‘British Summer Time Begins’ is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to Ysenda Maxtone Graham in vividly remembered detail by people who were there. Through this prism, it paints a revealing portrait of twentieth-century Britain in summertime: how we were, how families functioned, what houses and gardens and streets were like, what journeys were like, and what people did all day in their free time. It explores their expectations, hopes, fears and habits, the rules or lack of rules under which they lived, their happiness and sadness, their sense of being treasured or neglected – all within living memory, from pre-war summers to the late 1970s.