A sort of decade

The Sixties are there in the first sentence of the first chapter of this social, political and cultural history of the decade:

On the first day of October 1963, as the earliest whispers of dawn were edging across the cliff tops of the Yorkshire resort of Scarborough, the new leader of the Labour party nervously paced up and down the carpet of his hotel suite.

They are there in the first sentence of the second chapter:

Shortly after four o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, 16 October, a sleek black Daimler eased through the rain into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

And in the first sentence of the third chapter:

Just before eleven o’clock on the morning of Friday, 8 October 1965, Harold Wilson’s car drew into the narrow streets of Fitzrovia for the official opening of the new Post Office Tower.

Over-dramatised, over-metaphorical (‘whispers of dawn’, a car ‘easing’ itself through rain), breathless, these were the accents of the 1960s’ ‘major’ articles in the Sunday Times. It was a decade when papers, politicians and pop stars wanted everyone to know that a great deal, chiefly as a result of what they themselves did, was going on.

In old age, haggard and wistful, they still talk about the Sexual Revolution, the Pop Revolution, the revolution of technology (Wilson’s White Heat which gives this book its title): there were revolutions everywhere in the Sixties. All I know is that I was alive then, and if all that was going on, then I wasn’t part of it. I think I lost my virginity, but I can’t be sure. Appealed to for corroboration in later years, all the other witness to this momentous event would say was, distractedly, ‘Sort of.’ Which would have been a better title for this history.