Attlee and the Giant Evils

Clement Attlee was born in London in 1883 and went on to lead the Labour Party into government after the Second World War. His government set out to defeat what the Beveridge Report called society's five Giant Evils: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. That report gave the country the basis of the modern welfare state, and Attlee's government carried out many of its plans.

Away from politics, this same period of British history also produced one of its best-known poets. Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet and writer, liked to perform his writing aloud, and did so on the BBC. His radio play Under Milk Wood and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, a poem written for his dying father, are among his best-known works.