Sexual intercourse might have begun in 1963, but Christopher Bray believes it took another two years before the 60s really started to swing. In this rangy overview, he argues that while more famously cosmic or revolutionary years followed, 1965 was the one that “gave us a new tomorrow”, where high and low culture grew closer together and society began shedding old rules and orders. It’s not all op art nostalgia for David Bailey and the Krays, though. He dislikes the “hollowed-out materialism and spurious, self-congratulatory consciousness-raising” he thinks the changes triggered, ultimately facilitating Thatcherite self-centredness, and, at times, he appears as annoyed as any retired colonel tutting over longhairs. Sylvia Plath is handled with point-missing loftiness, while the abolition of grammar schools tips him into a rage (albeit one with an antielitism bent). Yet he writes sympathetically about outliers, too, exploring RD Laing’s therapeutic experiments and Bob Dylan’s undermining of “authenticity”. He also fits in the lingering effects of rail closures and car ownership. It’s a diversion that adds a boiled-beef-and-carrots heft to all the freedom-chasing giddiness, a reminder of the heavy demographic machinery grinding behind the Beatles and The Avengers.
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