Nicholson - How was it for you?: women, sex, love and power in the 1960s

Virginia Nicholson is one of the great social historians of our time, and How Was It For You? is another jewel in her crown. No one else makes history this fun Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Every baby boomer should read this great and wonderfully revelatory book if only to shout, Ah yes, thats exactly what it was like for me! Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes

How Was It For You? brings it all back. As always Virginia Nicholsons book is full of fascinating history and fascinating new material. It makes it feel like the Sixties have never been away, which they never have, as far as Im concerned. Wonderful Hunter Davies, author of The Beatles: The Authorised Biography

Written with verve, wit and empathy, this account of the 1960s skilfully interweaves the lives of individual women with broader social and cultural changes. Best of all How Was It For You? neither idealizes nor excoriates the bouncy, controversial decade Sheila Rowbotham, author of Women, Resistance and Revolution

Intimate, immersive, often moving, How Was It For You? subtly but powerfully subverts complacent male assumptions about a legendary decade David Kynaston, author of Modernity Britain

Virginia Nicholson is the outstanding recorder of British lives in the twentieth century. She has told us how it was for British women and therefore of course for men and children in the twentieth century. The formidable research and sympathetic understanding of so many different lives make this account of the 1960s that swinging, sexy, revolutionary decade the most vivid and moving of all her works. A fascinating decade, a fascinating book Carmen Callil, author of Bad Faith

Virginia Nicholsons social history of the lives of women during the 1960s is an absorbing study of an extraordinary age. Beautifully written and intensively researched I am sure How Was It For You? will remain a vital study for many years to come Selina Hastings, author of The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham

Essential reading for all those who lived through it, and for those who came after Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

I loved this. Yes, the 1960s were good fun, sometimes. But Virginia Nicholson forensically unpicks what permissiveness really meant for flower-chicks, fearful of seeming uncool. They were perpetuating a society as patriarchal and phallocentric as ever even in the counterculture. I was there, and shes right. Amazingly right about so many things. Roll on the 1970s when things did change but thats for another of her excellent books Valerie Grove, author of Laurie Lee

They say that if you remember the 1960s you werent really there. But if you really werent, then the next best thing is to read this fascinating book a razor-sharp account of the women who lived through that tumultuous decade Juliet Nicolson, author of A House Full of Daughters

A hugely ambitious kaleidoscope of a book, written in a sympathetic but also hard-headed tone that captures squalor and tragedy as well as glamour Richard Vinen, author of The Long 68

Among the Bohemians

Singled Out

Millions Like Us

Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes

VIKING

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Viking is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2019

Copyright Virginia Nicholson, 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover illustration based on artwork by Franz Gertsch, Mireille, Colette, Anne, 1967, by permission of Museum Franz Gertsch

ISBN: 978-0-241-97519-0

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

To my daughters

. Mother and Peter & Jane in toyshop: from Ladybird Shopping with Mother

. Cover image, Lady Chatterleys Lover

. Viv Nicholson headline, Spend, spend, spend. Daily Mirror, 28 September 1961

. St Trinians demon schoolgirls (Private Collection)

. The Disestablishment. Punch, 26 September 1962 (Punch Cartoon Library/TopFoto)

. Hiya! Sexy Chiz, Luv Will. Drawing by Willie Rushton (courtesy of Anne Chisholm)

. Christine Keeler Confessions, News of the World, 9 June 1963

. Front page, Manchester Evening News, 17 July 1963: [Pauline Reade] vanishes on way to jive club

. Paris and After How to capture the mood of 1964: News of the World, 1 March 1964

. Kelloggs Dream House, News of the World, 3 February 1964

. Dollybirds, from Marnie Fogg, Boutique (Mitchell Beazley, 2003) (Private Collection)

. The Scene Londons hotspots. Time, 15 April 1966

. The launch of Lady Janes Birdcage, from Tom Salter, Carnaby Street (M. & J. Hobbs, 1970) (The Stapleton Collection/Bridgman Images)

. Cartoon, Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-Up (Private Collection)

. Sindy, the Doll You Love to Dress (original packaging) (Private Collection)

. Advertising the London Bunny Hunt, Playboy Club News, October 1965

. Poster for the Festival of the Flower Children, Woburn Abbey, August 1967 (Private Collection)

. Militant Hull wives, Guardian, 3 February 1968

. Coloured Neighbours, News of the World, 24 January 1965

. Arena Three, March 1967, sourced from Glasgow Womens Library

. Womens Liberation and the New Politics, by Sheila Rowbotham (Private Collection)

. The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer (MacGibbon & Kee, 1970)

. A copy of Lady Chatterleys Lover is burned in Edinburgh (Private Collection)

. Helen Shapiro on stage (Private Collection)

. Dancers at Raymond Revuebar (Popperf0to/Getty Images)

. A 1961 dbutante, photographed by Tom Hustler (Private Collection)

. Floella Benjamins memoir, Coming to England (Private Collection)

. Marianne Faithfull a ready-made myth (Private Collection)

. Ann Leslie in 1966 (Private Collection)

. Margaret Hogg with her two sons (Private Collection)

. Beryl Marsden in 1963 (Private Collection)

. Kristina Reid a rsum for the 1960s (Private Collection)

. Melissa North (Private Collection)

. Rosalyn Palmer graduates in 1964 (Private Collection)