Postwar: 13. From Yalta to Potsdam

David Runciman tells the story of the 1945 election and the dawn of a new age.

The 1945 general election was one of the biggest shocks in British parliamentary history: a decisive rejection of Winston Churchill and his leadership. The election of Clement Attlee's Labour government in a landslide marked a break with the past and signalled a strong desire on the part of the British people for something new. But it was also a product of Britain's wartime experiences and revealed the many ways in which the country had already changed.

The years that followed -- the postwar years -- would bring about bold and radical reform, the building of a new nation, a 'New Jerusalem'. The Britain of the National Health Service and the welfare state, of nationalised industry and the so-called 'postwar consensus' -- all were ushered into place with this election. This is the Britain that most have us have grown up in and which still shapes an idea of who we think we are.

One of the enduring images of 1945 is of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin sat closely together at the Yalta conference: the three dominant warlords of the age meeting to decide the fate of the world. Five months later, when the Big Three gathered again for another photo call at the end of another conference – this time at Potsdam, near Berlin – everything had changed.

Featuring David Reynolds.