David Kynaston Deep Into the Sixties

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Beatlemania, the Rolling Stones, Harold Wilson, Vietnam, sweeping social reform and, finally, England lifting the World Cup at Wembley. Britain in 1965 and 1966 is remembered as a moment of extraordinary confidence and cultural transformation - but beneath the optimism, the country was changing in far more complicated ways.

In Deep into the Sixties, acclaimed social historian David Kynaston takes us from the aftermath of Winston Churchill's death in early 1965 to England's World Cup triumph in July 1966. Drawing on newspapers, letters, Mass Observation and, above all, the diaries and voices of ordinary people, he explores a Britain caught between old certainties and a rapidly emerging new world. Harold Wilson's Labour government promised technological modernisation and sweeping educational reform, but struggled with a weakening pound; opposition to the Vietnam War was growing; cities were being comprehensively rebuilt; and an increasingly affluent and self-confident younger generation was transforming music, fashion, spending and social attitudes.

Yet Kynaston also reveals how much of everyday Britain remained recognisably rooted in the past. Beyond the excitement of Swinging London, millions continued to live lives that had altered remarkably little. The result is a wonderfully detailed portrait of a country simultaneously looking backwards and racing forwards.

Kynaston has been called "the poet of postwar Britain" by Jonathan Coe, while Blake Morrison in the Guardian describes his work as "a tour de force of popular history". Reviewing this latest instalment, Craig Brown in the Sunday Times called it "as thrilling as ever".
At the Lewes Speakers Festival, David Kynaston takes us deep into two extraordinary years that helped create modern Britain - revealing not simply what happened, but what it actually felt like to be there.

David Kynaston is one of Britain's leading social historians and the author of the acclaimed Tales of a New Jerusalem series, his sweeping history of Britain from the end of the Second World War onwards. The series includes Austerity Britain, Family Britain, Modernity Britain and On the Cusp, and has established Kynaston as an unrivalled chronicler of everyday post-war British life. His distinctive approach combines political, economic and social history with the experiences and observations of ordinary people, producing what Jonathan Coe has described as history in a league of its own. Kynaston has also written extensively on the City of London, cricket and modern British institutions. Deep into the Sixties: Britain 1965-66 is the sixth volume in his celebrated history of post-war Britain.

A Q&A Session will follow.