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We Danced On Our Desks: Brilliance and backstabbing at the Sixties' most influential magazine
"Absolutely fabulous!" - Sir Ray Davies.The Kinks
"We Danced On Our Desks offers a window on another lost world, a silver age of journalism when a magazine could please itself and celebrities would wait to be invited into its charmed circle. It's also an unbeatable portrait of a writer finding his voice amid the distractions of a dementedly sybaritic decade." - The Observer
"It's wonderful. It intrigued and amused and delighted ... done with wit, verve, charm and self-deprecation." - bestselling author Anthony Quinn
"A classic of its genre." - author David Taylor
WE DANCED ON OUR DESKS is a compelling, entertaining and thrilling look at acclaimed journalist and writer Philip Norman's experiences working on the Sunday Times Magazine at the height of its popularity in the 60s and 70s. From incredible interviews with the Beatles to Bob Dylan, Gaddafi to Indira Ghandi, and through seismic historical events such as the Vietnam War, Philip provides a vibrant cultural insight into the Swinging Sixties and uniquely documents key events in his own incredible life.
provides a unique front row seat to the seminal events and the people who defined a generation and continue to impact us todayit's a compelling story of an extraordinary life, as a young man moves from a provincial existence headfirst into the heady world of the Swinging Sixties in all its provocative glorygives an addictive first-hand account of work and life at The Sunday Times Magazine, one of the world's most influential publicationsIncludes interviews with many icons of the rock, film, political and media worlds, including Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R Tolkein, Truman Capote, David Hockney, Philip Roth, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, the Everly Brothers, King Hussein of Jordan, Indira Gandhi, and President Gadaffi.
Philip has led - and is leading - an extraordinary life, full of drama, emotion, experience and positivity. His book is not simply a snapshot of a particular time in history, or remembrances of famous people and places, but a genuinely revealing and compelling account of a life lived and lived well.
"We Danced On Our Desks offers a window on another lost world, a silver age of journalism when a magazine could please itself and celebrities would wait to be invited into its charmed circle. It's also an unbeatable portrait of a writer finding his voice amid the distractions of a dementedly sybaritic decade." - The Observer
"It's wonderful. It intrigued and amused and delighted ... done with wit, verve, charm and self-deprecation." - bestselling author Anthony Quinn
"A classic of its genre." - author David Taylor
WE DANCED ON OUR DESKS is a compelling, entertaining and thrilling look at acclaimed journalist and writer Philip Norman's experiences working on the Sunday Times Magazine at the height of its popularity in the 60s and 70s. From incredible interviews with the Beatles to Bob Dylan, Gaddafi to Indira Ghandi, and through seismic historical events such as the Vietnam War, Philip provides a vibrant cultural insight into the Swinging Sixties and uniquely documents key events in his own incredible life.
provides a unique front row seat to the seminal events and the people who defined a generation and continue to impact us todayit's a compelling story of an extraordinary life, as a young man moves from a provincial existence headfirst into the heady world of the Swinging Sixties in all its provocative glorygives an addictive first-hand account of work and life at The Sunday Times Magazine, one of the world's most influential publicationsIncludes interviews with many icons of the rock, film, political and media worlds, including Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R Tolkein, Truman Capote, David Hockney, Philip Roth, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, the Everly Brothers, King Hussein of Jordan, Indira Gandhi, and President Gadaffi.
Philip has led - and is leading - an extraordinary life, full of drama, emotion, experience and positivity. His book is not simply a snapshot of a particular time in history, or remembrances of famous people and places, but a genuinely revealing and compelling account of a life lived and lived well.
371 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 12, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 6, 2025
Starting with an evocative depiction of his 1961 predicament stuck, literally, at the end of a pier where his forlorn father works in a tatty seaside resort in the Isle of Wight, Norman's account powerfully conjures up postwar Britain. By the decade's end, he's at the Sunday Times in London, interviewing Eric Clapton. In between comprises the bulk of his autobiography, as he rises through pluck and grit.
One of the few to do so into the milieu of Fleet Street and its closed doors against strivers without any pedigree, on merit rather than Oxbridge degrees, charisma, nepotism, or good looks, it seems. So Norman is justified to fkaunt his bonafides to have entered journalism on the decidedly lower end in provincial Huntingdonshire, then Newcastle and the Geordie environs, before winning a coveted prize enabling him to make his dream come true in the capital. Admittedly, this is a very English centered book, so many references went past me, but the gist of how he became a cub reporter, then features writer globetrotting on generous expenses divvied out shows a truly vanished, colorful profession.
Highlights include meeting P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Atlas, and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as Liz Taylor + Richard Burton, the Beatles, Gaddafi, and the power couple Harold Evans, his boss, and at the end, his paramour Tina Brown, who'd usher in a different ethos akin more to moguls Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch savvy P.R. after Sixties sputtered out, as does this memoir by half in the Me Decade.
It loses steam before then, as the whirlwind takes its victims, and even by his thirties, Norman as with many older colleagues appears to be winded by his high-speed partying and heavy indulging. By then, I was ready to say farewell, but the first section shows this veteran biographer of Beatles and Stones, Elton and Eric, to have honed his craft in an enviable, if inevitability short-lived, burst of true energy and frenetic engagement with his changing times, when he was placed at the global epicenter.
One of the few to do so into the milieu of Fleet Street and its closed doors against strivers without any pedigree, on merit rather than Oxbridge degrees, charisma, nepotism, or good looks, it seems. So Norman is justified to fkaunt his bonafides to have entered journalism on the decidedly lower end in provincial Huntingdonshire, then Newcastle and the Geordie environs, before winning a coveted prize enabling him to make his dream come true in the capital. Admittedly, this is a very English centered book, so many references went past me, but the gist of how he became a cub reporter, then features writer globetrotting on generous expenses divvied out shows a truly vanished, colorful profession.
Highlights include meeting P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Atlas, and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as Liz Taylor + Richard Burton, the Beatles, Gaddafi, and the power couple Harold Evans, his boss, and at the end, his paramour Tina Brown, who'd usher in a different ethos akin more to moguls Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch savvy P.R. after Sixties sputtered out, as does this memoir by half in the Me Decade.
It loses steam before then, as the whirlwind takes its victims, and even by his thirties, Norman as with many older colleagues appears to be winded by his high-speed partying and heavy indulging. By then, I was ready to say farewell, but the first section shows this veteran biographer of Beatles and Stones, Elton and Eric, to have honed his craft in an enviable, if inevitability short-lived, burst of true energy and frenetic engagement with his changing times, when he was placed at the global epicenter.
October 25, 2023
Simply a great story! Colourful, fun, poignant and an such a great representation of a decade. At times I could get confused weigh all the comings and goings of different people, but it did not get in the way. The key players were constant and writ large!
February 16, 2023
I can't remember where I heard of this book the first time and had almost forgotten that I was on the library waiting list for it. A truly enjoyable read and not the least flashy, name-dropping or bragging, and also with just the right reflecting notes. Unfortunately, I haven't come across his writing before (despite his fantastic career) but will definitely rectify that.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews