David Kynaston’s latest volume, *Deep Into the Sixties*, offers an expansive and detailed account of Britain’s social and cultural landscape during the mid-1960s, a period often characterized by its dramatic shifts but one whose transformative nature was unevenly felt across the country. Part of his ongoing “Tales of a New Jerusalem” series, which traces Britain’s postwar welfare state from 1945 up to Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, this 600-page installment focuses on the pivotal years 1964 to 1966.
Kynaston paints a nuanced portrait of a society in transition, juxtaposing the export of British pop culture and fashion with the lived realities of many regions where change arrived slowly, if at all. While bands like The Beatles achieved global acclaim, and Labour’s Harold Wilson initially inspired optimism, domestic challenges persisted. Employment remained high, but rising costs strained households, and many communities, particularly outside major urban centers, found the much-discussed “swinging sixties” to be an abstraction rather than their experience.
The book navigates a broad array of subjects, ranging from education reforms such as the expansion of comprehensive schools to urban renewal efforts marked by slum clearance and controversial city planning. Kynaston also addresses issues of race and immigration, offering insight into evolving societal attitudes, and becomes particularly incisive when examining the financial sector’s developments, drawing on his previous works about London’s economic institutions.
Structured primarily as a chronological narrative, the volume merges political developments with everyday experiences drawn from diaries, memoirs, and cultural references. Voices of notable figures including Viv Albertine, Hanif Kureishi, Derek Jarman, and Malorie Blackman intersperse the historical account alongside pop culture milestones and even fictional characters from *Coronation Street*. The narrative culminates with England’s 1966 World Cup victory and the tepid reception to The Beatles’ *Revolver* album, capturing a moment of national pride tempered by underlying tensions.
Kynaston’s approach involves dense layering of events, sometimes weaving seemingly disparate moments together. For example, a single day in September 1965 encompasses racially charged policies in London boroughs, David Jones’s transformation into David Bowie, and Paul Simon’s songwriting longings in a Cheshire train station. While this method effectively conveys the simultaneity and texture of the era, it occasionally risks reducing the impact of tragic or significant events by situating them within a rapid flow of unrelated occurrences.
The focus remains more on collective experience than on in-depth portraits of key political figures, which contrasts with the more anecdotal style found in other historical accounts of the period. Nonetheless, through this mosaic of voices and events, Kynaston advances the argument that the 1960s marked the emergence of a new individualism, shifting social values toward personal authenticity and consumption rather than traditional moral or collective frameworks.
Yet, this individualism is portrayed less as a sudden development and more as the culmination of longer-standing cultural currents, partly evident even in the austere postwar years covered in earlier volumes of the series. The strength of Kynaston’s work lies in its ability to evoke the era’s atmosphere so vividly that readers unfamiliar with the time can appreciate its texture and contradictions as if lived firsthand, providing an immersive experience of Britain on the cusp of profound change.