Deep into the Sixties

'The poet of postwar Britain . . . In a league of his own' JONATHAN COE ‘My goodness, [the series] rockets along: every page contains something surprising, something funny, something sad' CRAIG BROWN, SUNDAY TIMES The sixth book in the celebrated ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ series – named one of the best books of the 21st century by the Sunday Times It’s the heart of the Sixties in Britain – the Beatles and the Stones vie at the top of the charts, England win the World Cup, and optimism and patriotism percolate through the streets. But this is not the full story of those years. Disaffection on the political left increasingly focuses on the escalating Vietnam War; and the ambitious hopes of Harold Wilson’s Labour government start to founder on the parlous state of the pound. This was a time of looking both backwards and forwards – sweeping reforms to secondary education, huge swathes of urban redevelopment, and the irresistible rise of a confident, free-spending youth culture. Yet everyday life for many, especially beyond the big cities, bore striking resemblance to decades earlier. Covering the short but intense period from after Churchill’s death in early 1965 to England’s Wembley triumph in July 1966, David Kynaston uses a plethora of contemporary sources, including diaries of ordinary people, to paint a richly nuanced picture of unrivalled detail. Deep Into the Sixties continues to revolutionise how we see post-war Britain.