In Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes, Virginia Nicholson tells the story of women in
the 1950s: a time before the Pill, when divorce spelled scandal and two-piece sw
imsuits caused mass alarm. Turn the page back to the mid-twentieth century, and
discover a world peopled by women with radiant smiles, clean pinafores and gleam
ing coiffures; a promised land of batch-baking, maraschino cherries and brightly
hued plastic. A world where the darker side of the decade encompassed rampant p
rostitution, a notorious murder, and the threat of nuclear disaster.
