We all know about the 50s; tell me what you think of them, and I'll tell you which newspaper you read and how you vote. And yet, paradoxically, the years from to work incredibly badly as a single narrative unit with a uniform cultural flavour. They begin with an exhausted Labour government, rationing at its peak, cities scarred by bomb damage and maps of the world still marked by swathes of pink.
They end, however, with Supermac in Downing Street, Cliff Richard in the charts, televisions in the living rooms and union flags coming down across the globe. For a decade supposed to be grey and boring, in fact, the 50s were remarkably interesting. But do the 50s even work as a historical period? The first book of Kynaston's projected cycle takes us up to ; his second book will take us only up to , and then we are into the 60s.
Similarly, when I came to write about the 60s I started in with the Suez Crisis, the high-street boom and the advent of rock'n'roll, went up to , and then wrote a second book about the years from to That second period looks very much like the 60s to me, but what about the first one?
In my preface I described it as the first stage of the 60s but many reviewers called it the 50s. Do the satire boom, the first Bond films and the early years of the Beatles really belong to the 50s? All of this, of course, only goes to show how slippery and misleading decade labels can be. There is no getting away from the terms "50s" and "60s"; they are so deeply rooted in our collective consciousness that we seem destined to stick with them until nobody cares any more.
And yet they are so loaded with a kind of moral significance that they have become almost useless as historical terms. In particular, as Diski's book on the 60s makes clear, people who came of age between roughly the mids and the early s are often extraordinarily attached to the idea of themselves as a special group, privileged by education and affluence, and to the idea of that period as a unique occasion. Tell them that supposedly "50s" habits and values survived well into the s, or that the anxiety, gloom and social conflict attributed to the "70s" were palpable as early as the mids, and they often refuse to listen.
But then we all have our blind spots. In fact, even the most obviously attractive year unit has its problems. Nobody would dispute that the years between and had a texture all their own; probably nobody ever thinks of that period as anything other than the Thatcher years, the "80s", the years of material girls and Greed is Good, the years of the Falklands War and the Big Bang, when City traders broke open the champagne and miners queued outside job centres.
It would be a brave historian indeed who abandoned such an immediately appealing narrative structure: first page, St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Number 10; last page, tears in the car on the way out of Downing Street. It had to happen. And everyone met everyone else in the space of five minutes — every member of the gilded was the best of friends in no time, braided together, seemingly forever.
But there was little competition between them because they were really just starting out. But how on earth was Chrissie Shrimpton going to get the money for a cleaner?! She told Bailey they were going to be huge. Jagger quickly fell in love with her, and so they all started to hang out together.
This was where the Beatles started going later. In a way Bailey became his link to another world. Anyway, I decided to take him to a place called Casserole in the Kings Road.
This was the only other place that was as cool as the Ad-Lib, and was run by a gay New Zealand guy who we called Casserarsehole. I, being working-class, noticed bad manners more than most people. I remember he paid, which was unusual because back then Mick never paid for anything.
He put the note on the plate, but as we were putting our coats on I noticed he put it back in his pocket. I always liked the Stones more than the Beatles, because the Beatles were a bit naff, a boy band from the north. The Stones were cool. I thought the Beatles were very manufactured when they started out, and they only got interesting around Sergeant Pepper.
The Stones were always laughing at themselves, always charming and funny, whereas the Beatles were very controlling and protective of their image. Paul was always so earnest, and John was always quite rude. I liked John because he was so rude; he had very definite opinions and certainly knew where he was going.
Just before he died, Joe Strummer told me he was worried that he was too old to be doing what he was doing. I told him it was a racial thing, and that if he had been black and 90 years old then nobody would care.
Which is what the Stones have done. They can carry on until they die. Things had changed. It was very innocent. Swinging London soon became a theme park, though, a way of selling the Union Jack as a pop-art symbol.
The club had a tiny lift, which made it difficult for people to just blunder in from the street. As soon as you walked out into the top floor you were greeted with your own reflection, as there were mirrors everywhere. The owners knew that their new clientele liked nothing better than looking at themselves. Drinks were served in incredibly small glasses, 25 shillings for the first and ten after that. John Lennon was the first Beatle to brave the club, and seven weeks later it was the coolest place in London.
In January Ringo Starr -proposed to his girlfriend, Maureen, in the bar. Michael Caine said it was the only place he ever saw all four Beatles and all five Rolling Stones dancing together. So important was the Ad-Lib that this is the place where the illustrator Guy Peellaert decided to centre his own vision of Swinging London, in his enormously influential book Rock Dreams , published in In a series of striking tableaux, Peellaert displayed an amazing gift for re-creating the likenesses of his heroes in a pop-art style, while putting them in situations either echoing their mythical status or playing on their most famous lyrics.
He painted everyone from Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to Elvis and David Bowie, although he reserved his keenest interpretation for the Rolling Stones. The DJ wore a tuxedo, and the dancefloor was the size of a cocktail napkin. They served drinks like you got on an aeroplane — in little bottles with mixers on the side. They had a black chef called Teddy — which was very exotic at the time — and people used to take their food out on to the balcony and smoke joints. There was even a doorman to park your car for you, which was unheard of for a place like that.
There were photographers, singers, young actors and actresses, artists, models — everyone who was anyone. It was a kind of mixed experience. Nietzsche once said that in reality, hope is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torment of man. I was a Jack the lad and knew lots of people in London, so he asked me if I would meet her and introduce her to the right people.
She was my girlfriend from the beginning, which was a little bit naughty because she was 15 and I was It was my brother who called her Twigs and Twiggy first. She felt stupid on the dancefloor, and hated all the noise. Marianne Faithfull found the place a bit of a chore, too, not least because she was hit on all the time.
She used to sit and gaze out of the huge window that looked out over the rooftops, talking to no one. Elizabeth Taylor had one and I had the other. I had spent all day photographing Jean with a python around her neck. I had no idea what I was going to do with it until then. That night I went to the Ad-Lib, and had come out about midnight a little bit worse for wear. I was driving quite erratically and was stopped on Tottenham Court Road by a policeman.
Which is when I remembered the snake. And so I told him. In search of Myanmar's billion-dollar meth lab. How the world's first bitcoin heist went south Inside the most brutal dictatorship you've never heard of.
Smiley faces. What names were popular in the s? Why was the 60s a time of change? The 's was a time for change. The 60's changed peoples roles and rights within society.
This time brought about protests, riots, the civil rights movements and gave people who didn't previously have a voice to be able to speak out.
What was the s era called? The s pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; shortened to "the '70s" was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, , and ended on December 31, What was invented in the s? They had no idea that it would someday be used to remove tattoos.
Valium Anti-Anxiety Drug. Audio Cassette. BASIC, computer programming language. Hand held Calculator. What major event happened in ? What happened on this day in ? The channel also features dynamic history and science- inspired series such as Perfect Storms: Disasters that Changed the World, and programmes which challenge expectations including Secret Life of Ancient history is also featured in series including Alexander?
The company? Skip to main content Home Main Menu. Search corporate. Clear Search Cancel. Tuesday 30 September he swinging sixties has been named as the most defining decade of the 20th Century in British history a study revealed yesterday.
Even teenagers of today will be aware of the significance of key figures in history like Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles and the story of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King" Over ten episodes The Sixties examines key moments of the era using archival newsreel footage, personal movies, expert commentary from historians, and interviews with eyewitnesses to history.
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