Philip Larkin famously located Britain’s sexual revolution in 1963, “ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP.” Until that moment, sex for the repressed people of these islands meant only “a wrangle for the ring”; whereas after it, “every life became/A brilliant breaking of the bank”. The fact that Larkin, then in his early 40s, felt this had come “rather late” for him personally didn’t stop him naming the year an Annus Mirabilis.
The year 1963 is also where the social historian David Kynaston has arrived in his epic account of post-second
