London in the Sixties

From the blurb about a super new Thames & Hudson book on LONDON IN THE SIXTIES:

Sixties’ London was the world’s hub of pop culture.
Powered by the three key elements of youth, affluence and the mass media, its bold, creative spirit attracting an international roster of artists and luminaries in fields from pop music and fashion to literature and the visual arts.
While a new aristocracy of rock stars and trendsetters ruled the roost, Pop Art took a witty and detached view of contemporary consumerism, and architecture looked towards a utopian future.

This vibrant book paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of this exciting era. It features a stellar cast of characters from every cultural arena, including David Hockney, Francis Bacon, David Bailey, The Beatles, Peter Blake, Mary Quant, Diana Rigg, Bridget Riley and many more, all presented in context and showing how they contributed to a city at the epicentre of a cultural boom that was heard around the world, and whose echoes still resonate today.

Rainer Metzger is a writer and cultural historian, and professor of art history at the Academy of Karlsruhe, Germany. His books include Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings and Gustav Klimt: Drawings and Watercolours.

Yup - they are all here, the pop art of the time and the Swinging London movies, nice photos on BLOW-UP, MODESTY BLAISE, WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT?, Hockney, Hemmings, the magazines etc and the BBC gritty plays like CATHY COME HOME and all the social history of the swinging decade; plus those foreign directors like Antonioni, Polanski, Skolimowski, Losey and Lester and their different views of London. This tome only arrived today, just as I move house, so I will be dipping into it quite a bit ... its as good as VOGUE IN THE 60s.

My own early years in London (since 1964) included early encounters with Hockney, a pre-Beatles Yoko Ono, Jim Morrison, and in the early '70s Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Dirk Bogarde, Lee Remick and all those others, as well as Freddie Mercury...

I shall have to complete my own London memoir before too long!

I now have a house move - everything is packed and ready to go or moved already, so that will occupy me for several days, but on my return more on: Movies old and new, 1959, black-and-white movies in the 60s, Art, Glamour, Trash, Stars, People We Like, Gay Interest, more Antonioni, Romy Schneider, Loren, Vitti, Mangano, Belmondo, Jean Sorel, Gerard Philipe and assorted Euro-movies, and kitsch classics, and I am sure there will be more on Dirk, Kay, Anouk, Capucine, Joan Greenwood and those other perennial favourites....