How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during and leading up to the 1960s shape modern British fiction? The 1960s were the “swinging decade”: a newly energised youth culture went hand-in-hand with new technologies, expanding educational opportunities, new social attitudes and profound political differences between the generations. This volume explores the ways in which these apparently seismic changes were reflected in British fiction of the decade. Chapters cover feminist writing that fused the personal and the political, gay, lesbian and immigrant voices and the work of visionary experimental and science fiction writers. A major critical re-evaluation of the decade, this volume covers such writers as J.G. Ballard, Anthony Burgess, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, John Fowles, Christopher Isherwood, Doris Lessing, Michael Moorcock and V.S. Naipaul.

Sixties Britain provides a more nuanced and engaging history of Britain. This book analyses the main social, political, cultural and economic changes Britain undertook as well as focusing on the 'silent majority' who were just as important as the rebellious students, the residents if Soho and the icons of popular culture. Sixties Britain engages the reader without losing sight of the fact that the 1960s were a vibrant, fascinating and controversial time in British History.

Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, Smith will only vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” has long been considered a masterpiece on both the page and the silver screen. Adapted for film by Sillitoe himself in 1962, it became an instant classic of British New Wave cinema. In “Uncle Ernest,” a middle-aged furniture upholsterer traumatized in World War II, now leads a lonely life. His wife has left him, his brothers have moved away, and the townsfolk treat him as if he were a ghost. When the old man finally finds companionship with two young girls whom he enjoys buying pastries for at a café, the local authorities find his behavior morally suspect. “Mr. Raynor the School Teacher” delves into a different kind of isolation—that of a voyeuristic teacher who fantasizes constantly about the women who work in a draper’s shop across the street. When his students distract him from his lustful daydreams, Mr. Raynor becomes violent. The six stories that follow in this iconic collection continue to cement Alan Sillitoe’s reputation as one of Britain’s foremost storytellers, and a champion of the condemned, the oppressed, and the overlooked. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and numerous other groups put Britain at the center of the modern musical map. Please Please Me offers an insider's view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968, based on personal recollections, contemporary accounts, and all relevant data that situate this scene in the economic, political, and social context of postwar Britain. Author Gordon Thompson weaves issues of class, age, professional status, gender, and ethnicity into his narrative, beginning with the rise of British beat groups and the emergence of teenagers as consumers in postwar Britain, and moving into the competition between performers and the recording industry for control over the music. He interviews musicians, songwriters, music directors, and producers and engineers who worked with the best-known performers of the era. Drawing his interpretation of the processes at work during this musical revolution into a wider context, Thompson unravels the musical change and innovation of the time with an eye on understanding what traces individuals leave in the musical and recording process.

Explores the trailblazing work of the British literary avant-garde of the 1960sThis collection showcases the liveliness of British avant-garde fiction of the 1960s, which is diverse in its aesthetic practices and (sometimes) divided in its politics. It brings together a selection of original, research-led essays on more than a dozen avant-garde British writers of the 1960s, revealing this to be a crucial - and crucially overlooked - period of British literary history. Via detailed readings of authors such as Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Alexander Trocchi, Maureen Duffy, Alan Burns, Christine Brooke-Rose and many others, the contributors reveal the diversity of material produced in this period and trace the complex relations of influence and indebtedness between the 60s avant-garde, earlier modernisms and later postmodern writing. The volume shows that the 1960s is an even more vibrant period of literary experiment in Britain than might previously have been supposed - and that the avant-garde fiction produced then rewards our renewed attention to it. Key Features:Provides much-needed critical analyses of the work of 60s avant-garde writers Offers focused essays - each presents one author in their cultural/critical/historical contexts - by experts in the fieldRecuperates a lost decade in British literature and thus fills a vital gap in literary history, between late modernism and early postmodernismResponds to burgeoning critical and popular interest in authors such as Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin, and B.S. Johnson, and to a widespread interest in experimental and innovative writing more generally

Surfing the Sixties: Critical introduction / Philip Tew, James Riley and Melanie Seddon -- Our troubled youth: A literary history of the 1960s / Melanie Seddon -- The housewife and the single girl as archetypes in satirical novels of the 1960s / Joseph Darlington -- British women's fiction of the 1960s / Tracy Hargreaves -- Certain circles: Gay fiction and cultural attitudes of the 1960s / Yvonne Salmon -- Ways of staying, ways of saying: From Black writing in Britain to Black British writing / Graham K. Riach -- The 1960s existential fiction of John Fowles / Michelle Phillips Buchberger -- Experimental British fiction of the Sixties: Five meta-modern novelists / Philip Tew -- Inner space odyssey: Suburban spacemen and the cults of catastrophe / James Reich -- Terminal data: J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and the fiction of the decade's end / James Riley

If the World Wars defined the first half of the twentieth century, the sixties defined the second half, acting as the pivot on which modern times have turned. From popular music to individual liberties, the tastes and convictions of the Western world are indelibly stamped with the impact of this tumultuous decade. Framing the sixties as a period stretching from 1958 to 1974, Arthur Marwick argues that this long decade ushered in nothing less than a cultural revolution – one that raged most clearly in the United States, Britain, France, and Italy. Marwick recaptures the events and movements that shaped life as we know it: the rise of a youth subculture across the West; the sit-ins and marches of the civil rights movement; Britain's surprising rise to leadership in fashion and music; the emerging storm over Vietnam; the Paris student uprising of 1968; the growing force of feminism, and much more. For some, it was a golden age of liberation and political progress; for others, an era in which depravity was celebrated, and the secure moral and social framework subverted. The sixties was no short-term era of ecstasy and excess. On the contrary, the decade set the cultural and social agenda for the rest of the century, and left deep divisions still felt today.