It as at the start of the “Summer of Love” in 1967 that The Beatles released their album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to great acclaim.
Former Newcastle city council leader Tony Flynn says: “A month earlier, 22-year-old Jeremy Beecham was elected a councillor for Benwell, one of the poorest areas in Newcastle’s West End, without any such fanfare.”
The two events fix the flavour of the time. The album was a music milestone, and the young Oxford University graduate with a first class degree in law began the task of bettering life for people in his deprived ward.