The 1950’s: Britain of ‘Olde’

Photo courtesy of the BBC

BBC: The 1950s marked the last decade of "olde Britain" - when women were housewives, men smoked pipes and schoolboys sported caps and shorts, says Andrew Marr (right), whose TV history of post-war UK starts on Tuesday.

Between the fall of Attlee's Labour government and the return of Labour under cocky Harold Wilson, Britain went through a time which some believe to be a golden-tinted era of lost content.

To millions of others these were the grey, conformist, "13 wasted years" of Tory misrule.

It seems that today's British, when they think about the 50s, cannot decide whether to idealise or to mock.

This is for a good reason. Before the arrival of the 60s and rebel consumerism, this was for the last time truly a different country. A swansong to ‘olde Britain’(more) By Andrew Marr

Mark Alexander