The first babies injured by the drug thalidomide are born. Suicide is decriminalised. Jan 4^th, French author Albert Camus dies. Jan 20^th, government curbs the sale of "pep pills". Feb 3rd, Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan says that "The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact". The South African Parliament that he said this to didn’t like it, but the "winds of change" was taken up as something of a catchphrase for the decade. Feb 21^st, Castro nationalises private businesses in Cuba. Feb 26th, Princess Margaret announces that she is to marry a ‘commoner’. March 21st, 56 dead in the Sharpeville Massacre, South Africa. April 9th, an assassination attempt on Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African Prime Minister, fails. May 16^th, MPs listen to bill which proposes to curb the ‘teddy boy’ phenomenon. June 24^th, Sculptor Jacob Epstein’s last major work, ‘St Michael and the Devil’ is unveiled at Coventry Cathedral. August: the Rome Olympics ae the first to receive saturation TV coverage. Aug 7th, Cuba’s Fidel Castro nationalises American property. Aug 19^th, Soviet court finds a US airman guilty of spying. Aug 22^nd, satirical review ‘Beyond the Fringe’ opens at the Edinburgh Festival. Oct 20th, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, never available legally in Britain, goes on trial for obscenity (the prosecution counsel asks the jury if the book is one that they would wish their wife or their servants to read). Cleared of obscenity on Nov 2nd—Penguin sells 200,000 copies in one day. October 24^th, Bertrand Russell resigns as leader of CND. Nov 9th, John F. Kennedy, the youngest and most glamorous candidate, elected president of the US. Nov 23rd, Viscount Stansgate renounces his title, becoming Tony Benn. Dec 31st, end of National Service in Britain.

Theatre, Books & TV Peter Hall becomes director of the Shakespeare Festival Theatre. The New Left Review is launched. R.D. Laing publishes The Divided Self. Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is performed. Kingsley Amis, Take a Girl Like You. Jack Kerouac, Maggie Cassidy, Tristessa. Sylvia Plath’s first volume of poetry, Colossus, published. Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room. Beyond the Fringe revue (Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore) launches political satire at the Edinburgh Festival. Lionel Bart’s Oliver! suggests a revival of the British stage. Yves Klein uses nudes as ‘brushes’ in a Paris happening. The first episodes of Danger Man and Candid Camera appear on TV.

Film Reisz, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Fellini, La Dolce Vita, Hitchcock, Psycho.

Pop Music The Quarrymen become The Beatals then The Silver Beats then The Silver Beatles. They do gigs in Liverpool then go to Hamburg. After a gruelling period (7 nights a week, 6 hours a night at weekends) Harrison is deported for being under age; McCartney and Pete Best are briefly imprisoned for Arson and then deported. By the end of December, however, they are being labelled Liverpool’s most exciting group.

The government announces its bid to join the Common Market. Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100 begins to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. Jan 3^rd, US breaks off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Jan 30th, the contraceptive pill goes on sale. Feb 1^st, plans to build a Post Office Tower in London announced. Feb 16^th, Robert Graves appointed professor of poetry at Oxford. April, South Africa announces that it is to leave the Commonwealth. April 3^rd, 31 arrested during anti-nuclear protest in London. April 12th, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space. April 19th, the Bay of Pigs (failed US-sponsored invasion of Cuba). May 8th, George Blake, a former diplomat, receives a 42 year sentence for spying. Betting & Gaming Act introduces betting shops to the UK. May 14th & 25th, white racists attack ‘Freedom Riders’ in Birmingham Alabama. June 6th, Carl Gustav Jung dies. June 16th, Rudolf Nureyev defects from Russia at Paris airport. July 1st, British troops defend Kuwait against Iraqi attack. July 2^nd, US author Ernest Hemmingway dies. July 5th, French troops kill 80 Arabs during demonstrations in Algiers. August 20-31st, the Berlin Wall is built. Sept 12th, Bertrand Russell arrested at anti-nuclear demo. Sept 14^th, the first Mothercare shop opens in London. Sept 17th, violence features in a ban-the-bomb demo in Trafalgar square, among those arrested were the Chairman of CND Canon Collins, playwright John Osborne, jazz musician George Melly and actress Vanessa Redgrave. Bertrand Russell had been jailed the previous week for a breach of the peace. Sept 21^st, Dior heir Yves Saint Laurent says he will start his own fashion business. Oct 9^th, youngest Tory woman MP Margaret Thatcher gets her first job as a parliamentary secretary. Oct 20th, Algerians protest in Paris. Oct 25th, Allied and Soviet tanks confront each other at the Berlin border. Nov 1st, UK immigration controls tightened. Nov 2^nd, in London, Moseleyites attack MPs who oppose immigration controls. Nov 14th, the US increases its number of advisers in South Vietnam. Dec 4th, contraceptive pills available on the NHS. Dec 15th, Adolf Eichmann sentenced to death for ordering the killing of a million Jews in WWII (hanged in Israel in May 1962). Dec 22^nd, James Davis is the first US soldier killed by the Vietcong.

Art In New York, experimental artistic events are taking place in the loft of expatriate Japanese artist Yoko Ono. First exhibition of ‘Pop art’.

Theatre & Books RSC is founded under Peter Hall’s direction. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is published in Britain. Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey performed. Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days performed. Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein publishes Stranger in a Strange Land (in 1969 Charles Manson would cite this text, and the music of the Beatles, as inspiring elements in his thinking). William Burroughs, The Soft Machine. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head. Joseph Heller, Catch 22. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization.

TV Coronation Street appears on British TV. Also first episodes of The Avengers, The Morecambe & Wise Show. Children’s Hour (Andy Pandy, Picture Book, Rag, Tag & Bobtail, The Woodentops) was dropped in April.

Films Richardson, A Taste of Honey, Wise, West Side Story.

Jan, smallpox outbreak in UK. Decca recording company reject the Beatles. Feb 4th, Pop artist Peter Blake features in the first issue of the Sunday Times colour supplement (model Jean Shrimpton in a dress designed by Mary Quant, photographed by David Bailey, is on the cover, and the supplement also includes a short story by Ian Fleming). Feb 8th, eight die in OAS (‘secret army’ campaigning for Algerian independence) demonstrations in Paris. On July 3rd Algeria will gain independence from France. Feb 20th, John Glenn, American astronaut, orbits the earth Feb 27^th, MPs pass the Commonwealth Immigration Bill, restricting immigration from the Commonwealth. The Pilkington Committee debates the role and future of television. The Twist dance craze hits the UK. April 30th, Peter Cook founds the satirical magazine Private Eye. June 27^th, Charlie Chaplin gains an honorary doctorate from Oxford. July 6^th, US writer William Faulkner dies. July 10th, Martin Luther King jailed for leading a march in Albany, Georgia. July 31st, Fascists parade in the East End of London. August, John Calder organises the Edinburgh Writer’s Conference; speakers include William Burroughs and Alexander Trocchi; in Sept Trocchi would publish an important ‘manifesto’ for the sixties, ‘Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds’. Aug 5th, Marilyn Monroe found dead. Aug 9^th, German writer Hermann Hesse dies. Sept 2^nd, street battles between fascists and East enders in London. Sept 3^rd, US writer e.e. cummings dies. Sept 20^th, Mississippi Governor defies a court order and refuses to allow a Negro to join the university. Sept 30, riots as black student James Meredith enrols at the University of Mississippi, 200 are arrested. Oct 8^th, Elizabeth Lane becomes the first female judge to sit in High Court. Oct 9^th, Uganda declares independence after 62 years of British rule. Oct 15th, Amnesty International founded. Oct 28th, Cuban Missile crisis (The Cuban government, communist under Castro since a revolt in 1958, sparks a confrontation between the USA and the USSR when Soviet missiles bases are installed). Nov 7th, ANC leader Nelson Mandela jailed for 5 years. Dec 6th, 60 deaths attributable to London smog occurred in the last 3 days.

Books Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange. Al Alvarez, The New Poetry. J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Aldous Huxley, Island. Jack Kerouac, Big Sur. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle.

Film The first full-blown James Bond film, Dr No. Lean, Lawrence of Arabia (it will win 7 Oscars next year). Kubrick, Lolita. Truffaut, Jules et Jim. Yates/Cliff Richard, Summer Holiday.

TV and Publishing Nov 24th, first broadcast of the controversial That Was the Week That Was (TW3). The first issue of Gay News appears. Z Cars brings a new authenticity to TV genres. First episodes of Steptoe and Son, The Saint.

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(Which was rather late for me) —

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles’ first LP. (Philip Larkin, ‘Annus Mirabilis’)

President Kennedy Assassinated. Vietnam crisis erupts. Robbins report on the expansion of Higher Education. Mary Whitehouse begins her clean up TV campaign. Jan 14th, Britain refused entry to the Common Market. Jan 15^th, BBC ends its ban on mentioning politics, royalty, religion and sex in comedy shows. Jan 29^th, death of US poet Robert Frost. Feb 14th, Harold Wilson becomes leader of the Labour Party, in October he would promise ‘the white heat of technological change’ under a Labour government. March 4^th, death of US author William Carlos Williams. The Profumo scandal: March 22nd, War Minister John Profumo denies ‘indiscretion’ with Christine Keeler, a ‘model’ who also had the ear of a Russian naval attaché. On June 5th he admits that he had lied to the House of Commons. By Oct 10th the Profumo Scandal would have forced Macmillan’s resignation. Kim Philby identified as the ‘third man’ in the Burgess and Maclean affair of 1951, on March 3rd he defects to the USSR. March 26^th, mounted police disperse a demonstration by 4,000 jobless outside the Houses of Parliament. May 28th, Drs Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary are sacked from their Harvard posts for providing students with LSD. April 12^th, Martin Luther King arrested for leading a Civil Rights march in Alabama. April 15^th, 70,000 Aldermaston marchers in London protest against nuclear weapons. May 3^rd, John Kennedy praises Civil Rights demonstrators. June 1^st, Alabama Governor George Wallace vows to defy the ruling to open university to Negroes. June 3rd, George Wallace refuses to open the University of Alabama to black students. June 6th, 20 die in riots as fundamentalist Muslims oppose the Shah’s liberal reforms in Tehran. June 13th, ritual self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in Saigon. June 15^th, shooting of US civil rights leader Medgar Evars sparks riots. June 16th, Russia puts Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman, into space. June 11th, Kennedy orders the National Guard to protect black students enrolling at the University of Alabama, on Aug 18th James Meredith will become the first black student. June 15th, riots in the Southern States after the shooting of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers. June 26th, Kennedy makes his ‘Berlin’ speech. July 16^th, UK Government proposes the creation of a Ministry of Defence. July 31st, Dr Stephen Ward, implicated in the Profumo scandal, takes a fatal overdose. Aug 8th, the Great Train Robbery (they steal £2.6 million). UK government doctor says that sex change operations will never be possible. Aug 18^th, James Meredith, first black student at the University of Mississippi, gains his diploma. Aug 28th, 200,000 march for Civil Rights on Washington, Martin Luther King gives his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Aug 31^st, death of French painter Georges Braque. Sept 2^nd, US governor George Wallace orders Sate Troopers to seal off a High school to stop racial integration, Kennedy will reverse this on the 10th. Sept 15th, four black girls killed when a church in Birmingham Alabama, a meeting place for Civil Rights workers, is bombed. Sept 30^th, 189 Negroes arrested during a civil rights protest in Alabama. Oct 11^th, French artist Jean Cocteau and singer Edith Piaf die. Oct 18th, Earl Home becomes leader of the Tory Party. Nov 2^nd, archaeologists in Canada find Viking remains which predate Columbus by 500 years. Nov 4th, at the Royal Variety Performance John Lennon introduces ‘Twist and Shout’ by asking "Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery". Nov 22nd, President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas Texas. News of his death eclipses that of the death on the same day of Aldous Huxley who, suffering from cancer, died peacefully while under the influence of LSD. Robert Stroud, the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’, dies. Nov 24th, Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s alleged killer, is shot as millions watch on TV. Dec 6th, Christine Keeler (Profumo scandal) is jailed for 9 months.

Books & Theatre Arthur Koestler (ed) Suicide of a Nation?. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. John Fowles, The Collector. Nell Dunn, Up The Junction. Leonard Cohen, The Favourite Game. Alexander Trocchi, Cain’s Book. William Burroughs, Dead Fingers Talk. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle. Aldous Huxley, Literature and Science. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Oh What a Lovely War performed by the Theatre Workshop in Stratford.

Film Richardson, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Tom Jones, Anderson This Sporting Life, Hitchcock The Birds, Kubrick Dr Strangelove.

TV Ready, Steady, Go! goes on the air. First episode of Dr Who. Nov 13th, BBC governors take the controversial TW3 off the air before the end of its run (officially, because 1964 was an election year).

Pop Music On Jan 19th the Beatles get their national debut on ITV’s Thank Your Lucky Stars. March 2nd, the single ‘Please Please Me’ tops the British charts. March 22nd their first LP, Please Please Me, is released. May 24th, the Beatles get their own radio show. Beatlemania takes off. Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary help create the ‘Folk Boom’. Gerry & the Pacemakers, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. The Beatles, ‘She Loves You’. Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Harold Wilson takes office as Labour Prime Minister. Wilson is a member of the lower middle class. Edward Heath, the first ever elected Leader of the Conservative Party (1965) was also a ‘self-made’ man (his father was a builder and decorator). President Johnson sworn in as President of the USA. Libraries and Museums Act. The CNAA formed (the central body which awards degrees to the newly formed polytechnics — renamed and reformed institutes of Art and Design and Technical Colleges. Many new universities were also to appear in the sixties — Essex, Sussex, York, Kent, Warwick, Lancaster, etc). Centre for Cultural Studies opens at Birmingham University. Terence Conran opens the first Habitat shop in London. Jan 21^st, government figures show the average UK wage is £16 14/11 (£16.74). Feb 8^th, the Beatles get a riotous reception at Kennedy Airport New York. Feb 10^th, a London magistrate decrees that Cleland’s Fanny Hill is obscene and orders all copies confiscated. Feb 19^th, UK actor Peter Sellers marries Britt Ekland. Feb 23^rd, Beatles mobbed by fans on their return to Britain. Feb 25th, Cassius Clay takes world heavyweight boxing title from Sonny Liston. March 20^th, death of Irish writer Brendan Behan. March 28^th, Pirate Radio Caroline begins transmissions. March 30th, Mods and Rockers battle in Clacton. April 8^th, 30 arrested after Mods & Rockers clash in London. April 13th, Ian Smith becomes PM of Rhodesia. April 21st, BBC 2 goes on air. May 18th, Mods and Rockers clash in seaside resorts all around the UK. May 28th, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India since Independence in 1947, dies. June 2nd, PLO founded. June 11th, Martin Luther King jailed for Civil Rights activities in Florida. June 14th, Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. June 16th, Lenny Bruce tried for obscenity in New York. July 2nd, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act in a bid to continue the reforms initiated by Kennedy. July 6th, Princess Margaret attends the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night. July 10^th, 300 injured as a crowd of 150,000 welcome the Beatles back to Liverpool. July 18^th, riots in Harlem, New York. July 27th, race riots in New Jersey. June 28th, Malcolm X founds Organisation for Afro-American Unity. Aug 2^nd, police flown to Hastings to break up clashes between Mods & Rockers. Aug 4th, bodies of 3 missing Mississippi Civil Rights workers found. Aug 12^th, novelist Ian Fleming dies. Aug 18th, South Africa banned from the Olympic Games. Aug 21^st, 3 women in London found guilty of obscenity for wearing topless dresses. Aug 28th, the Beatles get together with Bob Dylan in a hotel in Manhattan, where he rolls them a joint. When stoned, Paul McCartney declared that he was "really thinking" for the first time and asked their road manager to write down everything he said. Sept 11th, the Beatles agree to play a concert in Jacksonville, Florida, only if the audience is guaranteed to be unsegregated. Sept 28th, survey shows that Radio Caroline gets more listeners than the BBC. Harpo Marx dies. Oct 15th, Brezhnev takes over from the ousted Krushchev in USSR. China explodes her first atomic bomb. Oct 16th, Labour win general election. Oct 22^nd, French writer Jean-Paul Sartre rejects the a Nobel Prize. Nov 20^th, Catholic Church agrees to exonerate the Jews for their part in the death of Jesus. Dec 6^th, Martin Luther King preaches a sermon in St Paul’s London. Dec 10th, Martin Luther King gets Nobel Peace Prize. Dec 21st, House of Commons abolishes capital punishment. Swinging London emerges (soon to be reconfigured as a ‘problem’ of permissiveness). Dec 29^th, an East End shooting incident is linked to the Kray twins. Success of David Hockney in a New York exhibition.

Music & Theatre The Beatles are the first pop group to play at the Carnegie Hall (the New Statesman leads with ‘The Menace of Beatlism’). Theatre of Cruelty (inspired by Antonin Artaud) season opens at the RSC; Peter Brook directs Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade. In Kyoto, Japan, artist Yoko Ono stages her Cut Piece, kneeling motionless on stage while members of the audience are enlisted to cut away her clothing. New York performances of Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy enlist naked men and women, dismembered fish and chickens, blood, paint and the audience into the event.

Books Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings. William Golding, The Spire. Joe Orton, Entertaining Mr Sloane. John Lennon, In His Own Write. Feb 10th, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1750) ruled obscene. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. Koestler, The Act of Creation. William Burroughs, The Nova Express. Saul Bellow, Herzog. Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion. Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man. Yoko Ono, Grapefruit.

Film Dick Lester/The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night. Hamilton, Goldfinger. Endfield, Zulu. Cukor, My Fair Lady. Leone, A Fistful of Dollars.

TV BBC launches Top of the Pops and The Wednesday Play (a platform for a lot of 60s social comment). First episode of The Man from UNCLE.

Pop Music Bob Dylan, The Times They are A-Changin’.

The Vietnam war escalates. Jan 1^st, Stanley Matthews becomes the first ever professional footballer to be knighted. Jan 4^th, death of the poet T.S. Eliot. Jan 7th, Kray twins arrested. Jan 24th, Winston Churchill dies. Feb 1st, Martin Luther King arrested on Civil Rights protest in Selma, Alabama. Feb 5th, TV cigarette advertising banned in the UK. Feb 11^th, Beatle Ringo Starr marries Liverpool hairdresser Maureen Cox. Feb 21st, Malcolm X assassinated in New York. Feb 23rd, Stan Laurel dies. March 28th, after protests are banned Martin Luther King leads 25,000 civil rights protesters in Montgomery, Alabama. April 6th, Julie Andrews gets an Oscar for Mary Poppins. April 18th, police arrest Mods and Rockers in Brighton. April 27th, anti-Vietnam protests in Paris. May 7th, White Nationalist party wins Rhodesian elections, later in the month a state of emergency will be declared. June 3rd, first American space-walk. June 12th, the Queen awards MBEs to the Beatles; many people return their own medals in protest. July 30^th, figures show that ‘Coronation Street’ is the most popular weekly TV programme. August, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters begin LSD experiments. Aug 12th, Britain appoints its first woman judge. Aug 11th-15th, Watts race riots in Los Angeles. Aug 15^th, Beatles play to 55,000 in the Shea Stadium New York. Aug 18th, the photographer David Bailey marries actress Catherine Deneuve with Mick Jagger as best man. Sept 8th, India and Pakistan at war. Sept 30^th, EMI start selling LPs through grocer shops for 12/6 each (62.5p). Oct 11th, a map is produced which allegedly proves that the Vikings discovered America. Oct 28th, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are charged with the Moors Murders (several would interpret these child-killings as the logical result of a ‘permissive society’); police have to use decoy tactics to get them through the crowd outside the court. Oct 26^th, Beatles receive their MBEs; the Queen asked them how long they had been together, and Ringo said "40 years". Nov 8^th, the Murder Bill (abolition of the Death Penalty) and the Race Relations Bill pass into UK Law. Nov 11th, Rhodesia declares UDI. Nov 13th, Kenneth Tynan says ‘fuck’ on live TV. The Cultural Revolution begins in China. Jennie Lee appointed as first Minister for the Arts and publishes ‘A Policy for the Arts. CAST, the first agitprop theatre group formed (The People Show and others follow). June, Albert Hall day-long poetry readings: The Children of Albion. Carnaby Street fashion boutiques flourish—rise of the mini-skirt.

Art Op art designs from artists like Bridget Riley (a visual art form affiliated to Pop art but focusing on optical effects brought about by contrast and repetitive patterning) are increasingly incorporated into fashion and interior and exterior decorating.

Books Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Sylvia Plath, Ariel and Collected Poems published posthumously. Harold Pinter, The Homecoming. Edward Bond, Saved. John Fowles, The Aristos. David Lodge, The British Museum is Falling Down. John Lennon, A Spaniard in the Works. Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels. Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth translated and published. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Louis Althusser, Pour Marx.

Film Lean Dr Zhivago. Wise, The Sound of Music. Donner, What’s New Pussycat? Leone, For A Few Dollars More. Polanski, Repulsion. Lester, Help! Schlesinger, Darling. Lester, The Knack (And How to Get it).

TV Mary Whitehouse founds National Viewers & Listeners Association. First episodes of Call My Bluff, Stingray, Jackanory.

Pop Music Beatles, Rubber Soul. Donovan, Fairy Tale. Bob Dylan, Bringin’ it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

Financial Crisis. The National Front formed. Jan 1st, the Psychedelic Shop opens on Haight Street, San Francisco. Jan 15th, Trips festival, ‘foundation of the Hippie movement’. Jan 29th, breathalyser testing begins on UK roads. March 4th, John Lennon tells an Evening Standard journalist that "Christianity will go. It will shrink and vanish. We’re more popular than Jesus now"; the Beatles become hate-objects in the Bible Belt of the USA, where mass-burnings of Beatle artefacts take place. March 23rd, first meeting of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope for 400 years. April 5th, oil discovered in the North Sea. April 8^th, figures show that the illegitimate birth rate in England and Wales has almost doubled in 10 years. April 10th, Evelyn Waugh dies. April 15th, Time cover story proclaims ‘Swinging London’ the city of the decade. April 21^st, state opening of Parliament is televised for the first time. May 2nd, in China Chairman Mao begins the purges of the old ‘revisionist’ generations and the Cultural Revolution accelerates. May 6th, Brady and Hindley jailed for life for the Moors Murders. May 15th, 8,000 anti-Vietnam protesters attempt to ‘levitate’ the Pentagon. May 17^th, Bob Dylan plays an electric set at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, many die-hard folkies boo, and one gets pop immortality by shouting "Judas". May 21^st, Cassius Clay beats Henry Cooper in London and retains his heavy weight title. June 7th, James Meredith is shot during a Civil Rights march in Mississippi. June 10th, Mary Quant (fashion designer) awarded the OBE. June 30th, the US bombs Hanoi. July 3rd, arrests made during anti-Vietnam demo in Grosvenor Square. July 21st, first Welsh Nationalist takes a seat in the House of Commons. July 30th, England beat West Germany 4-2 to win the World Cup. July 31st, race riots in New York, Chicago and Cleveland. August 3^rd, US comedian Lenny Bruce dies of a drug overdose. Sept 21st, Jimi Hendrix arrives in Britain; his musicianship and stage show would soon become the talk of London. Sept 28th, Andre Breton, founder of Surrealism, dies. Oct 6th (or 8th), LSD outlawed in America. Oct 10th, Event at the Roundhouse to launch International Times (IT). Oct 15th, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton Launch the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Oct 18th, the Queen grants a pardon for Timothy Evans, wrongfully hanged for murder in 1950 (Evans’ fate fuelled the campaign for the abolition of capital punishment). Oct 21st, a slag heap buries a school in Aberfan, South Wales; 28 adults and 116 children die. Oct 29^th, th British Army drops its colour bar. Nov, hippies and police riots in Los Angeles. Nov 8th, R. Reagan elected governor of California. Nov 9th, John Lennon meets Yoko Ono at her Unfinished Paintings and Objects exhibition at the Indica Gallery. Nov 29^th, Warren Mitchell, star of ‘Till Death us do Part’, wins award for best TV actor. Dec, Ian Smith rejects Wilson’s proposals for majority rule in Rhodesia, and leaves the Commonwealth. Dec 15^th, death of Walt Disney. Dec 23rd, Opening of the UFO club in London—Pink Floyd début there. Dec 26th, Time magazine awards Man of the Year to ‘The Younger Generation’.

Books Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation. Juliet Mitchell, ‘Women: The Longest Revolution’ (New Left Review). Joe Orton, Loot. John Fowles, The Magus. Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist. Graham Greene, The Comedians. Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown. Mao, The Little Red Book. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood. Norman Brown, Love’s Body. Jack Kerouac, Satori in Paris. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things.

Theatre Peter Brook produces the anti-war and confrontational US at the RSC. Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and others stage a series of happenings at the Armory, New York.

Film Gilbert, Alfie. Antonioni, Blow-Up. Narizzano, Georgy Girl. Zinnemann, A Man for All Seasons. Ritt, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Nichols, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451. Leone, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Polanski, Cul de Sac. Warhol, Chelsea Girls.

TV Cathy Come Home televised by the BBC. Peter Watkins’ The War Game is banned by the BBC. First episodes of Till Death us do Part, Batman, The Likely Lads, The Frost Report, Softly Softly, The Monkees.

Pop Music Beatles release Revolver LP. The Byrd’s ‘Eight Miles High’ is banned from US radio because of its ‘drug references’. Dylan, Blonde on Blonde. The Who, A Quick One. Sound of Music soundtrack. The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out.

The Permissive Society: liberal legislation in the field of sexual mores: The Abortion Act states that abortions may be obtained if deemed necessary by two doctors on medical or psychological grounds; the Sexual Offences Act is repealed, and a homosexual act between consenting adults (of age, in private) is now legal (gays begin to ‘come out’, the newspapers carry gay adverts and adverts for advice on contraception & abortion); reform of the divorce act. Wilson’s industrial reforms flounder. Reconstruction of the Arts Council as a politically independent body. Jan 10th, Provos ‘bomb’ the Royal wedding in Amsterdam. Jan 11th, the TV play ‘Cathy Comes Home’ is repeated; its exposé of homelessness sparked both scorn and reforms. Jan 12^th, the ‘new town’ Milton Keynes is named. Jan 14th, the Gathering of the Tribes, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Jan 16th, the Boys’ Own Paper folds after 88 years. Jan 31st, students disrupt a meeting and demand the resignation of Walter Adams, the Rhodesian head of the LSE (a porter dies during the uproar). Feb 5th, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ banned from TV. Feb 12th, Rolling Stone Keith Richard’s party raided and moral outrage and drug-busts ensue. Feb 13^th, teenagers run wild at Heathrow trying to get a glimpse of the Monkees. Feb 17th, ‘Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever’ released by The Beatles, LSE ‘daffodil protest’. March 1st, British troops fire on rioters in Aden. March 6^th, UK police begin trial use of helicopters. March 9th, IT offices raided. March 13th, student sit-ins and hunger strikes at the LSE. March 14th, nine German executives of the company that produced thalidomide are charged with contravening drug laws. March 19^th, the oil taker Torrey Canyon runs aground off Land’s End and starts to spill its load. March 30th, photo sessions for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper cover (designed by ‘Pop’ artist Peter Blake). April 3^rd, publishers Calder & Boyars sent for trial for the allegedly obscene Last Exit to Brooklyn. April 8th, Sandie Shaw wins Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Puppet on a String’. April 12th, Ken Kesey on drugs charges. April 15th, 400,000 march on the United Nations Building to protest against the Vietnam war. April 27th, Beach Boy Carl Wilson indicted for failing to turn up for draft induction (on May 8th Muhammed Ali is similarly indicted, stripped of his title and his license to box rescinded; Ali states "I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Congs"). April 29th, ‘14 Hour Technicolor Dream’ event at the Alexandra Palace, the Pink Floyd and many others play at what is essentially an IT benefit gig, but which attracted 10,000 people and became the largest underground gathering to date. April 30th, Love-In in Detroit turns into a police riot. May, Greece kicks out all ‘tourists with long hair’. Smoke-in (illegal variety) at Speaker’s Corner, London. May 10th, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards on drugs charges. UK Road Safety Bill, introducing compulsory breath tests, becomes law. May 19th, BBC bans the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’. May 21st, Youth for Peace in Vietnam rally in Trafalgar Square. May 30th, Biafra secedes from Nigeria. June 1st, the Beatles’ LP Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band released, SOMA (Society of Mental Awareness) founded, The Times carries an advertisement, signed by American intelligentsia, against American involvement in Vietnam (a counter-advert supporting the USA appears on July 14th), John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, counter-cultural impresario, jailed for 9 months on drugs charges. June 3rd, Boston race riots. June 5-10th Arab/Israeli Six Day War. June 16th, Beatles on the cover of Life, Paul McCartney admits taking LSD. June 16th-18th, Monterey Pop Festival. June 25th, Beatles’ recording of ‘All You Need is Love’ is broadcast live on TV and relayed worldwide to an estimated 150,000,000 viewers. Muhammed Ali receives a 5 year sentence for refusing to join the army. June 27th, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards found guilty at West Sussex Assizes (sentenced on 29th to prison). July, foundation of RELEASE by Caroline Coon (an organisation which aims to help people dependent upon or busted for drugs. London demonstration against News of the World for informing on the Rolling Stones. The regional Drugs Squads are formed as a response to the drug ‘panic’. July 1st leader in The Times ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?’ condemns the Jagger-Richards sentence. July 7th, Nigerian troops invade Biafra. July 11th-15th, Newark race riots. July 16th, Legalise Pot Rally in Hyde Park. July 17^th, death of US jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. July 23-27th, race riots in Detroit. July 24th, celebrities sign pro-cannabis advert in the Times. July 27th, homosexuality legalised. July 31st, Jagger appeals against jail sentence and wins. Aug 1^st, death of British poet Siegfried Sassoon. Aug 9th, Joe Orton murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ is played at his funeral. August 14th, Pirate Radio stations closed. Aug 15th, Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte dies. Aug 25th, Beatles & co go to a Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, while a ‘Festival of the Flower Children’ is held at Woburn Abbey. Aug 27th, Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager, found dead from an overdose of tranquillisers. Sept 3rd, LSD demonstration in London. Oct 6th, ‘Death of Hippie’ ceremony in San Francisco (an act of defiance to the media hyping of the hippies and the chronic overcrowding and poverty of the Haight-Ashbury district). Oct 8th, death of Che Guevara. Prince Charles begins courses at Trinity College Cambridge. Oct 19th, Joan Baez and 122 others arrested for anti-draft protest (Governor R. Reagan commends the police). Oct 21st anti-Vietnam marches in America and Europe, including the ‘exorcism’ of The Pentagon in Washington DC (Norman Mailer is among those arrested, and his The Armies of the Night (1968) is a ‘novelisation’ of this event). Oct 31st, Brian Jones on drugs charges (demo outside the court). Nov, foot and mouth disease is hitting British livestock. Nov 14th ‘Hello Goodbye/I Am the Walrus’ released by the Beatles. Nov 19th, Britain devalues the pound. Nov 23rd, in London Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn found obscene. Dec, founding of the Youth International Party (yippies) by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner. Dec 1^st, Tony O’Connor becomes Britain’s first black headmaster. Dec 4-6th, New York anti-draft demos. Dec 7th, opening of The Apple Shop, 94 Baker St London. Dec 18^th, British spy and ‘traitor’ Kim Philby is hailed as a hero of the USSR. Dec 26th, the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour shown on BBC television. First heart transplant performed.

July, ‘The Dialectics of Liberation’ conference at the Round House. New Left Mayday Manifesto. Oz launched in February.

Books Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea. Norman Mailer, The Bullfight. Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop. Donald Barthelme, Snow White. Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp at The Royal Court. Orton also writes a screenplay for the Beatles, Up Against It, but nothing materialises. The Beatles also attempt to acquire the rights to Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. Penguin publish Liverpool poets in The Mersey Sound. R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle. Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medim is the Massage. George Perry & Alan Aldridge, The Penguin Book of Comics.

Film Donner, Here we go Round the Mulberry Bush. Pennebaker/Bob Dylan, Don’t Look Back. Schlesinger, Far From the Madding Crowd. Penn, Bonnie & Clyde. Jewison, In the Heat of the Night. Nichols, The Graduate. Corman, The Trip. Bunuel, Belle de Jour. Vadim, Barbarella. Sjoman, I am Curious Yellow. Widerberg, Elvira Madigan. Godard, Weekend.

TV First episodes of The Prisoner, The Forsyte Saga, The Frost Programme.

Pop Music Tom Jones, ‘Green Green Grass of Home’. Monkees, ‘I’m a Believer’. Donovan, ‘Sunshine Superman’ and ‘Mellow Yellow’. The Doors, ‘Light My Fire’. Jimi Hendrix Experience, ‘Purple Haze’. Procol Harum, ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. The Kinks, ‘Waterloo Sunset’. The Beatles, Sergeant Pepper. Pink Floyd, ‘See Emily Play’, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced. Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Pope Paul VI declares that birth control other than by the ‘rhythm method’ is contrary to natural law. Tariq Ali becomes president of Oxford Student Union. Jan 1st, ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign by the government. C. Day Lewis becomes poet Laureate. 2^nd Jan, actree Sharon Tate marries director Roman Polanski. Jan 31st, Viet Cong launch the Tet offensive, images of atrocities and violence on TV bring the war ‘back home’. Trevor Nunn takes over from Peter Hall at the RSC. Feb 9th, Enoch Powell calls for an embargo against Kenyan Asians. March 8-12th, anti-communist riots in Poland. March 16th, My Lai massacre in Vietnam (in Nov 69 Lieutenant William Calley will be charged with ordering this massacre of civilians). March 17th, anti-Vietnam demo in London turns into a battle with police outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. April 4th, Martin Luther King assassinated; riots, looting and arson ensue in the States. April 12-15th, students riot in West Germany after the attempted murder of student leader Rudi Dutschke. April 21st, on the eve of the Race Relations Bill, Enoch Powell delivers his "rivers of blood" speech in Birmingham, predicting race war (the political climate lurches to the right; a Gallup Poll suggests that 74% of Britons support Powell’s views). French students occupy the campus at Nanterre (a university in a bleak suburb of Paris where students are sexually segregated. The events of May 68 in Paris begin to gather). April 23rd, British currency goes decimal. May 5th-7th, French students riot, the Sorbonne is closed, street fighting and many casualties in the Latin Quarter. May 9^th, Kray twins and others are arrested on charges including conspiracy to murder. May 21st, London’s Ronan Point tower block collapses (beginning of popular disenchantment with modern architecture). Student demonstrations across Europe. May 15th, Lennon and McCartney announce the formation of Apple Corps. On the 18th of May Lennon convenes a meeting of the band to inform them that he is Jesus, on the 19th Lennon and Ono get together and record Two Virgins. June 15th, Lennon and Ono plant acorns ‘for peace’ in the grounds of Coventry Cathedral. May 21st, French workers call a general strike in support of the students; France grinds to a standstill. May 24th, French policeman killed during rioting in Lyon. May 30th, De Gaulle announces strong measures against the rioters, dissolves the National Assembly and calls General Elections. May 30th, Students at the Hornsey College of Art begin a sit-in and mount a related exhibition at the ICA (many students and staff will be dismissed as a result of this ‘rethinking’ of education). June 3rd, Valerie Solanis, author of the SCUM manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) shoots Andy Warhol. June 5th, Robert Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles. June 12th, De Gaulle bans demonstrations and, amid more riots, on the 30th the Gaullists are returned in the election; a bizarre coalition of the Gaullist state, the Unions and the French Communist Party turn the revolutionary impulses into reforms. June 15th, heroes of the Paris barricades (Daniel Cohn-Bendit & Alan Geismar), flown in by the BBC, address a conference at the LSE. June 24th, Tony Hancock commits suicide in Sydney. July 10^th, US Dr Benjamin Spock is sentenced to 2 years for encouraging draft dodging. July 31st, Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn acquitted of obscenity. Aug 12th, race riots in Watts, LA. Aug 21-23rd, Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia. August 15th, Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin arrive in Chicago and claim that they will disrupt the Democratic Party Convention by releasing greased pigs, seducing delegate’s wives and daughters and getting female yippies to dress as prostitutes and put LSD into delegate’s drinks. These suggestions were taken seriously by the mayor and his police force. Aug 22nd, Cynthia Lennon sues for divorce. Aug 23rd, a Be-In organised by the yippies in Chicago. Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders lead a dance through the Old Town. Aug 27th, police violence during demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago; the police brutality is so extreme that the McCarthy campaign office becomes an emergency hospital. Yippie ‘leaders’ arrested. Sept 26th, theatre censorship by the Lord Chamberlain abolished in the UK, emergence of many fringe groups. Sept 27th, cast of the musical Hair appear naked onstage in London. Oct 12-27th, at the Mexico Olympics black athletes give the Black Power salute, and some are expelled from the games. Oct 10^th, Enoch Powell warns that immigration may "change the character of England" (let’s hope so…) Oct 18th, Lennon and Ono raided by the Drug Squad (on Nov 28th they are fined £150 for possessing cannabis; a general ridiculing of and hostility to John and Yoko in the press begins). Oct 28th, anti-Vietnam demo in London; it passes off with little incident (Tariq Ali urged for a peaceful demonstration), but, in this year of moral panics, the press put this down to the effectiveness of the police rather than the pacifism of the demonstrators. Thousands protest in Prague against Soviet occupation. Nov 1st, President Johnson orders cessation of bombing in North Vietnam. Nov 6th, Richard Nixon elected President of US. Nov 14^th, Margaret Thatcher becomes shadow Transport Minister. Nov 17th, Czech students occupy Prague university in protest against Soviet occupation. Death of British author and artist Mervyn Peake. Nov 28^th, death of children’s author Enid Blyton. Dec 16^th, end of an 11-day sit-in at the University of Bristol. Dec20th, death of US author John Steinbeck. Dec25th, the Queen calls for racial tolerance in her Christmas message. Dec 27th, Apollo 8 orbits the moon.

Books Peter Brook, The Empty Space. Kingsley Amis, I Want it Now. Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Jack Kerouac, Vanity of Duluoz. Timothy Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (later the source of the film Blade Runner). Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan. Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of it. John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse. David Cooper (ed), The Dialectics of Liberation. Donald Barthelme, Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’. Jean Baudrillard, Les systèm des objets.

Film Lindsay Anderson, If. The Beatles, Yellow Submarine. Lester, How I Won the War. Reed, Oliver! Richardson, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Schaffner, Planet of the Apes. Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby. Marquand, Candy. Rafaelson, Head.

TV First episodes of Dad’s Army, Please Sir, Whicker’s World.

Pop Music The Beatles ‘White’ album. Their first single on the ‘Apple’ label, ‘Hey Jude/Revolution’, is released (‘Hey Jude’ would be broadcast on The David Frost Programme—the last ‘promotional’ appearance by the Beatles on British TV. The underground press would attack Lennon for advocating pacifism in this B-side version of ‘Revolution’, but two other, more ambiguous versions would appear on the ‘White’ album). Lennon/Ono, Two Virgins. On Dec 18th Lennon and Ono ‘appear’ inside a bag at a happening in the Albert Hall. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland. The Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun. Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet (the track ‘Street Fighting Man’ became something of an urban guerrilla anthem).

Jan 1st, Kenya revokes Asian trading rights, 15,000 emigrate to the UK. Jan 3rd, Catholics riot in Londonderry. Jan 10th, the Wooton Report on Drug Dependence is published; it calls for liberalisation of the controls on ‘soft’ drugs; the press call it a ‘Junkies’ Charter’. Jan 12th, police battle with anti-racist protesters in London. Jan 19th, student Jan Palach immolates himself in Prague as a protest against Soviet occupation; after his death, on the 26th, protesters fill Wenceslas Square. Jan 24th, student demonstrations at the LSE, followed by a sit in and a ‘banning’ of student leaders on Jan 30th. Feb 2^nd, death of actor Boris Karloff. Feb 3rd, LSE closed down. March 2nd, Chinese and Russian troops in border clashes. Yassir Arafat becomes leader of the PLO. Feb 13th, human eggs made fertile in a test-tube for the first time. Feb 18^th, pop stars Lulu and Maurice Gibb get married. March 4^th, Kray twins found guilty of murder. March 10^th, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King. March 11^th, death of british author John Wyndham. March 12^th, Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman. March 13th, the Drug Squad raids George Harrison’s house. March 20th, John & Yoko married in Gibraltar. April 9^th, Sikh busmen in Wolverhampton win a 2-year battle to be allowed to wear their turbans at work. April 24th, anti-war protest in New York. May 2nd, New York campuses close after rioting. May 3rd, Jimi Hendrix arrested in Toronto for possession of Heroin. May 16th, John Lennon’s application for a US visa is refused on the grounds of his drug conviction. May-June, John and Yoko stage various bed-ins for peace. May 18^th, Apollo 10 is launched at the moon. June 8th, Spain closes land border with Gibraltar. June 9^th, Enoch Powell proposes repatriation for immigrants. June 15th, Georges Pompidou elected President of France. June 22^nd, US actress Judy Garland dies. June 27th, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, cops move in to raid a gay bar; the customers fight back, and the Gay Liberation Movement is born. July 2nd-3rd, Brian Jones, guitarist with the Rolling Stones, is pulled unconscious from his swimming pool and dies before reaching hospital. July 4th, The Plastic Ono Band release ‘Give Peace a Chance’. July 5th, the Rolling Stones give a free concert to 250,000 people in London’s Hyde Park as a tribute to Brian Jones. Death of German architect Walter Gropius. July 8th, Marianne Faithful, Mick Jagger’s partner, is in a coma after a drugs overdose in Sydney. July 16^th, launch of Apollo 11. July 20th, Mary Jo Kopechne drowns in Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick. July 21st, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon. July 25^th, death of German artist Otto Dix. Aug 3^rd, violence flares in Northern Ireland. Aug 9th, the Charles Manson ‘Family’ murders Sharon Tate and four friends in LA. British troops sent into Northern Ireland to patrol Catholic areas of Belfast. Aug 15-17th, Woodstock Music and Art Fair on a farm near New York. Nearly 450,000 gathered to hear the music, and became the unpaid extras in one of the most successful rock films ever. Aug 21st, Soviet tanks quell anniversary of invasion protests in Prague. Aug 31st, Bob Dylan appears at the Isle of Wight Pop Festival. Sept 3^rd, death of North Vietnamese statesman Ho Chi Minh. Sept 5th, first colour ITV transmissions. Sept 16th, Biba, the fashion store, opens in Kensington High Street. Sept 21st, police storm 144 Piccadilly to evict 250 squatters. Oct, trial of the ‘Chicago Eight’ (see Aug ’68). During the trial Black Panther Bobby Seale is ordered by the judge to be bound to a chair and gagged. Oct 14^th, the 7-sided 50p coin comes into UK circulation. Oct 17th, Divorce Bill is passed, linking the Divorce Act to the Matrimonial Property Act and instituting the no-fault divorce (‘fault’ with one of the partners no longer has to be proven, the ‘irretrievable breakdown’ of the marriage is sufficient). Oct 21^st, Margaret Thatcher becomes shadow Education spokesman. Death of ‘beat’ author Jack Kerouac. Nov 1-6th, Sex Fair in Copenhagen. Nov 5-15th, anti-apartheid protesters fight with police during South African rugby tour of Britain. Nov 2nd, many arrested during anti-apartheid protests against the Springbok tour. Nov 27^th, the Rolling Stones play Madison Square Gardens. Dec 4^th, Chicago police shoot and kill two Black Panthers. Dec 6th, the Rolling Stones give a free concert at the Altamont Speedway track in California. It all goes horribly wrong and the Hell’s Angels, allegedly policing the event, kill a black teenager. The press hail ‘the death of the sixties’. Dec 12th, terrorist bombings in Italy. Dec 13th, US Supreme Court orders the end of segregation in the South. Dec 19th, a male sterilization (vasectomy) clinic opens in Birmingham. Dec 24th, Manson ‘Family’ arrested and charged with multiple murder. Dec 26^th, a BBc ‘World at One’ poll names Harold Wilson the Man of the Decade, with Enoch Powell coming in second. James Callaghan, the Home Secretary, makes the abolition of hanging permanent. Open University conceived.

Books & Theatre Edward Bond season at The Royal Court. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Joe Orton, What The Butler Saw. Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City. Horovitz (ed) The Children of Albion. Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five. Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation. Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’. Alan Aldridge (ed), The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics.

Film Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy. Hill, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch. Penn, Alice’s Restaurant. Hopper, Easy Rider. Kubrick, 2001 a Space Odyssey. Antonioni, Zabriskie Point. Fellini, Satyricon. Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West. Thomas, Carry On Camping.

TV Oct 5th, first episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation; also this year, first episodes of Callan, Star Trek, Nationwide, On the Buses. Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation. A Family at War. The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Pop Music Thunderclap Newman, ‘Something in the Air’. The Beatles, ‘Ballad of John & Yoko’. Rolling Stones, ‘Honky Tonk Woman’. Lennon/Ono, ‘Give Peace a Chance’, ‘Cold Turkey’. Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed. The Beatles, Abbey Road. Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica. Jan 3rd, Two Virgins confiscated for obscenity by New Jersey police. Nov 25th, Lennon returns his MBE in protest against Vietnam, Biafra, "and ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the chart". Dec 16th, Lennon and Ono put up posters in 11 cities worldwide proclaiming ‘War is Over—If You Want It. Merry Christmas from John and Yoko’.

Students stage a sit-in at the University of Warwick’s registry and discover files on their political activities (E.P. Thompson would write Warwick University Ltd about this event and the issues that it raised about links between universities and big business). Jan 1st, coming of age reduced from 21 to 18 in the UK. Jan 16th, police raid an exhibition of Lennon’s lithographs in Bond Street. Jan 25th, violent anti-war protest in Whitehall. Jan 26th, Mick Jagger fined £200 for possession of Cannabis. Feb, Lennon and Ono get involved in Michael X’s Black House Project, the anti-apartheid movement and CND. Feb 2^nd, death of British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Feb 3rd, Andy Warhol’s film Flesh is seized by police in London. Feb 9th, Equal Pay and Sexual Discrimination papers published (leading to 1975 Acts)—equal pay for women. Feb 25^th, death of US artist Mark Rothko. March 8^th, premiere of Samuel Beckett’s 1-minute play Breath in Oxford. April 1-27th, jury decides in favour of the defendant in Lennon’s lithograph trial. March 29th, troops seal off Bogside Londonderry after clashes with Catholics. April 29th, student unrest at Ohio university. April 30th, US troops attack Viet Cong bases in Cambodia. May 4th, four students shot dead by the National guard at Ohio State university (Neil Young would write a song about it; on Sept 28th students would burn their draft cards in protest against the killings). May 5th, outcry in USA over the invasion of Cambodia. May 12^th, 6 blacks die in violence in Georgia. May 28th, Maoist students riot in Paris. June 7th, novelist E.M. Forster dies. June 19th, Conservatives return under Edward Heath in the General Election. June 23^rd, Prince Charles gets a 2:2 in History from Cambridge. July 3rd, violent Catholic demonstrations in Belfast. July 16th, national dock strike in the UK, PM Heath declares a state of emergency. Aug 2nd, first use of rubber bullets in Ulster. First inter-racial wedding in Mississippi. Aug 9th, race riots in Notting Hill. Aug 26th, Isle of Wight Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix plays. Sept 6-12th, Palestinian terrorists seize and blow up 3 airliners. Sept 18th, Jimi Hendrix dies in London of a drugs overdose and inhalation of vomit (considerable scepticism is rife about his treatment by the emergency services). Sept 28^th, death of US author John Dos Passos. Oct 4th, Janis Joplin, star of the Monterey Pop festival (’67), dies of a heroin overdose. Nov 9^th, death of Charles de Gaulle. Nov 12^th, US court martial begins of Lt William Calley for leading the My Lai massacre in 1968. Nov 20th, 150,000 drowned by a tidal wave in East Pakistan. Nov 20th, an Angry Brigade bomb (a British terrorist group founded on the principles of the Enragés of France ’68; they will bomb the home of the Employment Secretary in Jan 1971) and a feminist demonstration (flour-throwing) disrupt the Miss World Contest in London. Nov 25^th, Japanese author Yukio Mishima calls for a return to militarism before committing hara-kiri in the Tokyo Defence Ministry. Nov 26, a report states that more working days were lost through strikes this year than at any time since 1926. Nov 27th, Gay Liberation Front holds its first London demonstration. Dec 16-20th, anti-communist riots, and their suppression, in Gdansk, Poland. Plans finalised for Milton Keynes, the last of the new towns. Dec 31^st, Paul McCartney files a suit against the rest of the Beatles in order to dissolve "The Beatles and Co".

Books Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch. Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture. Richard Neville, Playpower. Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things translated. Janov, The Primal Scream. R.D. Laing, Knots. J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition. Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers. George Melly, Revolt Into Style.

Theatre Peter Brook’s direction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford. Oh! Calcutta! devised by Kenneth Tynan opens at the Roundhouse.

Film Roeg/Cammell, Performance. Russell, The Devils. Altman, MASH. Nichols, Catch 22. McGrath, The Magic Christian. Penn, Little Big Man. Nelson, Soldier Blue. Hiller, Love Story. Warhol, Trash. Narizzano, Loot.

TV First episodes of Doomwatch, A Man Called Ironside, Take Three Girls.

Pop Music April 10th, Paul McCartney announces the break-up of the Beatles. May 13th, world premiere of the film Let It Be.

The Beatles, Let It Be. George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Lennon, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

On Dec 31st 1969 John Lennon is featured on the BBC TV special ‘Man of the Decade’. Of the sixties he said:

Just under a year later, on Dec 8th 1970, John Lennon gives an extended interview to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone. When asked what effect the Beatles had on the history of Britain he replied:

Sources include—:

Derek Mercer (ed), Chronicle of the 20th Century (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1995)