Sex, as Philip Larkin famously told us, began in 1963: but it did not. It began much later in the decade, even, for some, in the early Seventies; and it came to an end with the Aids panic of the early Eighties. What began in 1963 was the Age of Wilson, and it ended with his resignation in 1976. This is still described as surprising, which it was, and even as mysterious, which it most certainly was not. The course of events is set out clearly, if I may say so without undue offence to modesty, in my book The Road to Number 10 (Duckworth, 1998), now rare and scarce. Whether his departure was puzzling or not, as it remains to some people, his age possesses a certain coherence. As Winston Churchill wrote of Joseph Chamberlain, he made the weather, as Margaret Thatcher and, later, Tony Blair were to make it after him.
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