Clement Attlee's government is now remembered as the founder of the welfare state. At every General Election we are invited to recall the creation of the NHS and the building of a new Jerusalem.
But how radical was this agenda and how much of this memory is myth-making by subsequent Labour governments?
Michael Portillo remembers the pragmatism, the compromises and the in-fighting of that post war government. He meets Denis Healey, Peter Carrington and Tony Benn to uncover the forgotten choices made in a Britain exhausted by one war and on the brink of another.
You can read a transcript of this programme.
First broadcast: Monday 16 May 2005 on BBC Radio 4
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