Published in 2019
496 pages
Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Yorkshire and Sussex, and studied at Cambridge University. She lived abroad in France and Italy, then worked as a documentary researcher for the BBC. Her books include the acclaimed social histories Among the Bohemians, Singled Out, Millions Like Us, and Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes. She is married with three children and lives in Sussex.
What is this book about?
“A feeling that we could do whatever we liked swept through us in the 60s…”
The sexual revolution liberated a generation. But men most of all.
We tend to think of the 60s as a decade sprinkled with stardust: a time of space travel and utopian dreams, but above all of sexual abandonment. When the pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961 it seemed, for the first time, that women – like men – could try without buying.
“It was paradise for men… all these willing girls…”
But this book – by ‘one of the great social historians of our time’ – describes a turbulent power struggle.
Here are the voices from the battleground. Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, Beryl who sang with the Beatles, bunny girl Patsy, Christian student Anthea, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, from mods to rockers, from white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories throw an unsparing spotlight on morals, four-letter words, faith, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.
This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It’s about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination – half a century before feminism rebranded. For out of the swamp of gropers and groupies, a movement was emerging, and discovering a new cause: equality.
The 1960s: this was where it all began. Women would never be the same again.
