As a writer of non-fiction, I lean heavily on others for collaboration and support, and this is my opportunity to thank them all in print. First comes Eleo Gordon. Eleo was my editor, mentor and friend at Viking for sixteen years; How Was It For You? was commissioned by her, and though she reached retirement when I was halfway through writing this book, her rocklike belief has been there for me throughout. Daniel Crewe picked up where she left off. He has been supportive, tactful, super-cultured and alert to my shortcomings – what more could one ask for? – and I feel very lucky, too, that clever Connor Brown is his assistant. Fortune has also been my friend in the shape of my stellar agent, Caroline Dawnay. Thanks, too, to Venetia Butterfield for her generous confidence in my books; also to Joanna Prior. My husband William Nicholson has been the wisest, kindest and most loving of critics; I couldn’t have done it without him. Claire Singers gave me a boost when it was most needed (and put me in touch with one of my most glamorous interviewees), and my daughter Julia Nicholson has not only been my devoted one-woman focus group, but has also contributed her impressive editorial skills to reading the penultimate draft.
I travelled the country to ask many women the question that this book poses. Those who agreed to share their memories – often intimate ones – were generous, brave and honest. Though some have preferred not to be named here I salute them all. Among others, they are: Pattie Boyd, Lucy Brett, Dame Carmen Callil, Jessica Chappell, Mavis Cheek, Anne Chisholm, Emma Codrington, Baroness Cumberlege, Marjorie Davies, the late Mary Denness, Theresa Edwards, Patsy Embry, the Revd Anne Gurney, Caroline Harper, Margaret Hogg, Dr Christine Hugh-Jones, Harriet Lear, Beryl Marsden, Margaret Masding, Doreen Massey, Clare Morpurgo, Veronica Morriss, Melissa North, Rosalyn St Pierre, Lady Patricia Stevens, Kristina Walton and the Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe PC DSG. And a special thank you to Kate Clarke for sending me her published Journal.
Making contact with women from a wide variety of backgrounds can be difficult. I had help in this from a range of accomplished networkers, who made suggestions, spread the word and set up introductions: my old friend Jane Salvage deserves a special mention in this category, as does Lisa Dando, director of the Brighton Women’s Centre. I am also particularly indebted to the Hull-based journalist Dr Brian W. Lavery, who went to unusual lengths in helping a fellow author. Thank you, too, to Julia Aisbitt, Ariane Bankes, Sir Peter Bazalgette, Noelle Beales, Julian Bell, Jane Bonham-Carter, Sam Burnett, Richard Chamberlain, Carolyn Chinn, Julian Henriques, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Simon Brett, Rosalind Brown, Rupert Christiansen, Macha Ferrant, Jacqueline Fox, Dan Franklin, Susie Freeman, Peter Grimsdale, Janie Hampton, Patsy Hickman, Tom Hollander, Jo Hugh-Jones, Annalena MacAfee, Kinn McIntosh, Joanna Newton, Teddy Nicholson, Maggie Norden, Angie O’Rourke, Leah Romaniello, Georgie Rowse, Barbara Ryrie, Andrew Scadding, Anne Sebba, Paula Thompson, Paul Willetts and Ellis Woodman. I’m also grateful to my cousin Dame Pippa Harris, producer of Call the Midwife, for giving me a steer on approaches to women affected by thalidomide in the 1960s, to Mikey Argy of the Thalidomide Trust, but above all to Dr Ruth Blue, Secretary to the Board of Trustees of the Thalidomide Society, for her trust in me, and for her inexhaustible care and attention to detail.
Others took trouble to link me to special resources, ransack their memories, advise, correct, encourage and give technological assistance; my thanks here to Richard Adams, Baroness Kay Andrews, Juliet Annan, Lucy Annan, Maureen Ashby, Desmond Banks, Cressida Bell, Baroness Benjamin, Lucy Bland, Dr John Collins, Orlando Gough, Linda Grant, Jonathon Green, Martin Jennings, Jan Maulden, Hilary Newiss and Maria Nicholson. Special thanks are due to Nicola Lane for authorising the use of her published memory, to Philippa Walker for lending me a VHS of her 1999 documentary Bunny Girls, to Kim Fuller for sharing his knowledge of 1960s broadcast media, and to Beatles biographer Hunter Davies for spreading some of the stardust, while, for everyone who knows him, it will come as no surprise to hear that Paul Beecham not only suggested one of my most compelling interviewees, but has also been a go-to resource for 1960s pop arcana. My visit to north Lincolnshire was made extra special by the intervention of two wonderful good Samaritans, June and Carley Taylor, who quite literally went the final mile to ensure that my interviewee Mary Denness didn’t fall by the wayside.
Lloyd Ross has been at the end of an email countless times in the making of this book; my thanks to him for his research in the Social Sciences Library of the London School of Economics. Sheila Rowbotham has been an inspiration, and responded generously when I wrote to her. The historian David Kynaston has, as usual, been both an encouragement and a wonderful example.
It would be impossible to list the teams of librarians and archivists who have given time to answering my queries, but their institutions deserve warm mentions: the London Library, the British Library (particularly those in the recorded sound and newspaper collections), Birmingham University archive and the University of Sussex Special Collections.
Thank you, too, to Louisa Brown for her painstaking assistance in dealing with a number of literary and musical estates, and also to the team of staff and freelancers associated with Viking who helped How Was It For You? along its journey: copy-editor Trevor Horwood, senior editorial manager Emma Brown, indexer Dave Cradduck and publicist Olivia Mead.
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In addition, the author gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of copyright holders to quote from a number of authors and sources, as follows: excerpts from The Centre of the Bed by Joan Bakewell, copyright © Joan Bakewell 2003, reproduced by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd; excerpts from An Education (2009) by Lynn Barber, published by Penguin and reproduced with permission of the author; excerpts from The Arms of Britannia © (2010) and Coming to England © (1995) by Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE, reproduced by permission of the author; excerpts from Wonderful Today by Pattie Boyd with Penny Junor, reproduced by kind permission of Pattie Boyd; excerpts from Hidden Lives by Margaret Forster (1997), and from The New London Spy by Hunter Davies (1966), reproduced with the kind permission of Hunter Davies; excerpts from The Sixties (2010) by Jenny Diski, published by Profile Books, reproduced with permission of the estate of Jenny Diski; excerpt from lyrics of ‘Boys’, words and music by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell © 1960, reproduced by EMI Longitude Music, London WIF 9LD; excerpts from Talking to Women (1965) and Up the Junction (1963) by Nell Dunn, published by MacGibbon & Kee Ltd, reproduced with the generous permission of the author; excerpts from Through Gypsy Eyes (2013) by Kathy Etchingham and Andrew Crofts, published by Orion, reproduced with the kind permission of the authors; excerpts from Groupie (1969) by Jenny Fabian and Johnny Byrne, published by Omnibus Press, reproduced with permission of the authors; the use of approximately one hundred and forty-one (141) words from FAITHFULL by Marianne Faithfull, published by Penguin Books, copyright © Marianne Faithful, 1995; excerpts from The Captive Wife – Conflicts of Housebound Mothers (1966) by Hannah Gavron, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, taken from pp. 51 and 78–9, reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis on behalf of Routledge & Kegan Paul PLC; all excerpts from Days In The Life (1988) by Jonathon Green, published by William Heinemann Ltd, reproduced with the kind permission of the author; extract from ‘Mrs Albion You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’ from Collected Poems by Adrian Henri, published by Allison & Busby, copyright © Adrian Henri 1986, reproduced by permission of the estate of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN; Now We Are Thirty: Women of the Breakthrough Generation (1981) by Mary Ingham, published by Eyre Methuen, all excerpts reprinted by kind permission of the author; excerpts from On Iniquity – Some Personal Reflections by Pamela Hansford Johnson, reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd on behalf of the literary estate of Pamela Hansford Johnson, copyright © Pamela Hansford Johnson 1967; Christine Keeler’s quotations are taken from Secrets and Lies by Christine Keeler with Douglas Thompson (2012), published by Blake Publishing and reproduced with permission; a quotation from ‘Annus Mirabilis’ from The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin, published by Faber and Faber Ltd, reproduced with permission from the publisher; excerpts from Lady Chatterley’s Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence) by D. H. Lawrence, published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 and reproduced by permission of Paper Lion Ltd and the estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli and Cambridge University Press; excerpts from Killing My Own Snakes: A Memoir (2013) by Ann Leslie, reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear; a quotation from the lyric Smashing Time by George Melly, copyright © George Melly 1967, reproduced by permission of A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd, authors’ agents; grateful acknowledgements to Kate Clarke for the use of excerpts from Journal (1997) by Kate Paul, first published by Carrington Press, Hay-on-Wye; excerpts from The 50s & 60s: The Best of Times; Growing Up and Being Young in Britain (2003) by Alison Pressley, published by Michael O’Mara Books and reproduced with the generous permission of the author; all excerpts from Promise of a Dream (2000), published by Allen Lane, and Women’s Liberation and the New Politics (May Day Manifesto Pamphlet No. 4) by Sheila Rowbotham reproduced with the kind permission of the author; extracts from Twiggy – An Autobiography by Twiggy reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of Twiggy; excerpts from the article ‘Some like it rough’ by Fay Weldon, published in The Guardian on 15 October 2004, reproduced by kind permission of the author.
Grateful acknowledgement is also due to the BBC for use of extracts from the British Library Millennium Memory Bank Oral History Collection.
Acknowledgements are also due to the following whose works have been quoted from: Jonathan Aitken, The Young Meteors; Richard Barnes, Mods!; Cecil Beaton, Beaton in the Sixties: The Cecil Beaton Diaries; Sybille Bedford, The Trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Barbara Bell, Just Take Your Frock Off – A Lesbian Life; Alan Bestic, Turn Me On Man – Face to Face with Young Addicts Today; Drusilla Beyfus, The English Marriage – What It is Like to be Married Today; Drusilla Beyfus and Anne Edwards, Lady Behave – A Guide to Modern Manners for the 1970s; Rosie Boycott, A Nice Girl Like Me; Christopher Bray, 1965 – The Year Modern Britain was Born; John Brunner, lyrics to ‘The H-Bomb’s Thunder’; Sydney Carter, lyrics to ‘Wicked Lady C’; Barbara Cartland, Barbara Cartland’s Etiquette Handbook: A Guide to Good Behaviour from the Boudoir to the Boardroom; Rupert Christiansen, I Know You’re Going to be Happy; Grace Coddington with Michael Roberts, Grace – A Memoir; Richard Davenport-Hines, An English Affair – Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo; Ron Dunbar and Edith Wayne, lyrics to ‘Band of Gold’; Marnie Fogg, Boutique; Ronald Fraser, 1968 – A Student Generation in Revolt; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique; Jill Gardiner, From the Closet to the Screen; Allan Ginsberg, ‘I am that I am’, from Collected Poems; Linda Grant, Sexing the Millennium; Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch; Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl; Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson, Generation X; Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Society; Margery Hurst, No Glass Slipper; Janey Ironside, Janey; Laura Jackson, Heart of Stone; Rebecca Jennings, Tomboys and Bachelor Girls; Jenny Kee, A Big Life; Cécile Landau, Growing Up in the Sixties; Shawn Levy, Ready Steady Go – Swinging London and the Invention of Cool; Fiona MacCarthy, Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes; the words of Angela Carter, Alexandra Pringle, Julie Christie, Marsha Rowe, Patricia Vereker and Sue O’Sullivan in Sara Maitland, Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s; Charles Marowitz, Burnt Bridges: Souvenir of the Swinging Sixties; Cherry Marshall, The Cat Walk; Diana Melly, Take a Girl Like Me; Janet Mendelsohn, Varna Road; Juliet Mitchell, Looking Back at Woman’s Estate and Women – The Longest Revolution; Geoffrey Moorhouse, Britain in the Sixties – The Other England; Henrietta Moraes, Henrietta; Richard Neville, Hippy, Hippy Shake and Playpower; Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture; Ruth Padel, I’m a Man – Sex, Gods and Rock’n’Roll; Frances Partridge, Good Company – Diaries 1967–70; Mary Quant, Quant on Quant; Eugene Raskin, lyrics to ‘Those Were the Days’; Mandy Rice-Davies with Shirley Flack, Mandy; Elizabeth Roberts, Women and Families; Valerie Tedder, You’ll Never Last; Ben Thompson, Ban This Filth; Michael Tracy and David Morrison Whitehouse; Michelene Wandor, Once a Feminist; Mary Whitehouse Quite Contrary; Ann Widdecombe, Strictly Ann; Paul Willis, Profane Culture; Elizabeth Woodcraft, The Saturday Girls; Peter York, Style Wars.
While every effort has been made to obtain permissions from copyright holders, the publishers would be glad to correct any errors of omission or commission in future editions.