The dawn of a new liberality came in 1960 when 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' could be published. Then in 1968 the abolition of stage censorship allowed the rock musical 'Hair' to be performed - it summed up the values of the hippie movement: sexual freedom, drug-taking and rebellion against authority, especially against the Vietnam War. Other freedoms were found with the contraceptive pill and, at the end of the decade, easier divorce laws.

Among the headlines were: the scandal of the Profumo Affair (1963), which involved the model Christine Keeler; the tensions of the Cold War (the Berlin Wall from 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962); the public fascination with the Great Train Robbery in 1963 and subsequent search for Ronald Biggs. In 1966 the Aberfan disaster struck when a coal tip tore through a school ("death's dark vale"). In 1965 Winston Churchill died peacefully, but it was the shock of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 that remained as a landmark in most people's memory.

Henry Cooper became much admired after two legendary fights with Cassius Clay (1963 and 1966); but Bobby Moore's England team were even greater heroes when they won the World Cup in 1966. The Sun newspaper replaced the Daily Herald in 1964, the first Blue Peter (1964) annual arrived for its five million viewers; in 1962 The Sunday Times colour supplement appeared with Jean Shrimpton on the cover, photographed by David Bailey.

Much of the driving force of the Swinging Sixties came from the synergy between pop music, television and fashion. Each impulse stimulated another - Beatlemania, Ready Steady Go!, the fashion of Mary Quant and Biba, the haircut of Vidal Sassoon, the Mods on their scooters, through to flower power, psychedelia and the cropped hair of the skinheads (at the end of the Sixties) that contrasted so dramatically with the hippies' long flowing hairstyle.