Annie Nightingale

Why are the authorities so keen to stop the young having fun?

In his history of dance music in modern Britain, Ed Gillett describes police kettling at raves from the 1990s onwards and the attempt by parliament to ban repetitive beats

Annie Nightingale, the first British woman DJ, in the 1960s. [Getty Images]
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  • Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain

    Ed Gillett

    Picador, pp. 464, £20

Oh Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed. You have written a magnificent tome, but I am so conflicted about it. Party Lines is more than 400 pages: a quote from Goethe at the start, a lengthy introduction, plus a glossary and an index. But we get into semantics from the beginning. What is dance music now? Practically anything with a beat that isn’t George Ezra or Sam Fender – and they’ve probably got a load of dance mixes on the go as well.

There were plenty of unlicensed raves happening even in lockdown, from Blackburn to Primrose Hill

This is not a definitive book...

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