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The 50s & 60s: The Best of Times: Growing Up and Being Young in Britain
For the baby-boomer generation, the 1950s was a decade characterized by Liberty bodices, suspender belts, black Bakelite phones, Ford Populars, Sooty puppets, and Meccano sets, while the 1960s featured Ready Steady Go, Radio Luxembourg, "going to work on an egg," Lambrettas, mini cars, Biba, and The Beatles. This nostalgic volume collects personal reminiscences from baby-boomers from all over Britain that recall the happy, changing decades of the mid-century. Featuring celebrity contributions from Richard Branson, Patricia Hodge, Maureen Lipman, Jon Snow, Joanna Lumley, Sir David Hare, Simon Hoggart, Robert Lacey, Twiggy Lawson, Richard Neville, Lord Saatchi, and Sue Townsend, these funny, poignant, and sometimes sad vignettes will take you back to the 1950s childhood innocence and the fab days of the 1960s.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
224 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 28, 2018
Багато реалій мені недоступні, але після цієї книги, в якій зібрані пазлики-фрагменти (від їжі до політики до школи до батьків до подорожей до стилю до музики), складається потроху ціла картина 50тих і 60тих років у Британії. Гірко-солодко.
April 9, 2026
This is an excellent book for those of us who were little kids in the 1950s and teenagers in the 1960s. The illustrations bring on waves of nostalgia and some of the text is very funny.
For example, one contributor remembers, in the days before central heating, the repeated chorus of "Close the DOOR!"
Another recalls the time when you could play in the street and only occasionally be interrupted when someone shouted "Car!"
The book is very light-hearted, but it also made me think more seriously about the economic, social and political context of the times. Firstly, it was the period of capitalism's long post-war economic boom. We took it for granted that everyone would have a job, that living standards would rise every year, and that we would have free education and health care, paid for by progressive taxation.
Secondly, there was a widespread political mood in the sixties of support for the idea of social justice, and growing opposition to racism, sexism, class inequalities, wars, famines, etc.
Thirdly, in the sixties we really thought we were THE rebel generation, with our music, our fashions and our rejection of old-fashioned attitudes. Of course this was largely the arrogance of youth: every generation feels like that to some extent, and our rebellious youth sub-cultures were no real threat to the status quo. But on the positive side, at least it left a lot of us with a healthy disrespect for the powers-that-be.
When the 1970s came along and capitalism reverted to economic crisis and started to take away from ordinary people many of the post-war gains, it's not surprising that some of us, influenced by the three factors above, moved politically to the left.
For example, one contributor remembers, in the days before central heating, the repeated chorus of "Close the DOOR!"
Another recalls the time when you could play in the street and only occasionally be interrupted when someone shouted "Car!"
The book is very light-hearted, but it also made me think more seriously about the economic, social and political context of the times. Firstly, it was the period of capitalism's long post-war economic boom. We took it for granted that everyone would have a job, that living standards would rise every year, and that we would have free education and health care, paid for by progressive taxation.
Secondly, there was a widespread political mood in the sixties of support for the idea of social justice, and growing opposition to racism, sexism, class inequalities, wars, famines, etc.
Thirdly, in the sixties we really thought we were THE rebel generation, with our music, our fashions and our rejection of old-fashioned attitudes. Of course this was largely the arrogance of youth: every generation feels like that to some extent, and our rebellious youth sub-cultures were no real threat to the status quo. But on the positive side, at least it left a lot of us with a healthy disrespect for the powers-that-be.
When the 1970s came along and capitalism reverted to economic crisis and started to take away from ordinary people many of the post-war gains, it's not surprising that some of us, influenced by the three factors above, moved politically to the left.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews