Philip Larkin famously located Britain’s sexual revolution in 1963, “Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles’ first LP.” Until that cork‑popping moment, sex for the repressed people of these islands meant only “a wrangle for the ring”, and “a shame that started at sixteen”; whereas after it, “every life became / A brilliant breaking of the bank”. The fact that Larkin, then in his early 40s, felt this had come “rather late” for him personally didn’t stop him naming the year an Annus Mirabilis.
The year 1963 is also where the social historian David Kynaston has arrived in his epic account of post-second world war Britain, Tales of a New Jerusalem, which now reaches its fourth instalment, entitled A Northern Wind: Britain 1962-65. Kynaston’s eye is cooler than Larkin’s, yet he, too, identifies a cultural hinge-point in this short period (the book covers only 28 months). This was the moment, midway between Clement Attlee’s landslide Labour win of 1945 and Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979, when the “Daddy Knows Best” culture of the 50s began to crumble and a freer, more individualistic Britain emerged.
