1963 and all that: Raymond Durgnat and the birth of the Great British Phantasmagoria | Sight & Sound
No war broke out, nor was there an economic crash or general election, but 1963 has long been regarded as a watershed in modern British history. Above all it was the year of the Profumo scandal, which, as Richard Davenport-Hines argues in An English Affair, “sounded a death-knell to the confidence of traditional hierarchical authority”. Echoing this theme, it was a year that began with de Gaulle’s rejection of Britain’s application to join the Common Market and ended with the granting of independence to Kenya, one of the last major acts of decolonisation. It was also the year Beatlemania arr...