Keeping alive the glorious spirit of 1976
1. Concorde enters service On January 21st 1976 a British Airways Concorde took off from London Heathrow airport with a full compliment of passengers destined for Bahrain, while at the exact same time Air France’s maiden Concorde flight left the runway at Paris’ Orly airport for Rio de Janeiro. After initially having been refused permission […]
Continue ReadingImagine a world in which there was no internet and no mobile phones. If you wanted to call someone you rang their landline, and if they were out you rang them back again when they were in. No internet of course meant no e-mail, so if what you had to say needed to be put […]
Continue ReadingIf there ever was an enduring cultural icon of the 1970s it was the Raleigh Chopper bicycle. For kids of a certain age, it was necessary to be the proud owner either of a racing bike, or of a Chopper. One was practical, fast and, when ridden correctly, relatively safe. The other was the coolest […]
Continue Reading1000 Memories of 1976 is just as the name suggests, except that there are actually many more than a thousand. Each and every memory was solicited through Facebook groups whose admins kindly lent me their platforms, and was crafted together into a veritable mosaic of nostalgia which I hope will serve as a valuable reference point for present and future historians of the era.
Continue ReadingIt is often said that what you’ve never had you never miss. Back in the early 1970s nobody in the UK, beyond the well-travelled few, had had anything remotely resembling what would today be called ice cream. Sure, we’d had some puffy yellowy-white stuff in a block served to us out of a wrapper, in […]
Continue Reading. Think of this iconic 1976 sci-fi movie and the mind becomes inexorably fixed upon a vision of the gaunt, pallid figure with wavy red locks that was David Bowie playing Thomas Jerome Newton, the visitor from another planet come to Earth to find water with which to sate the desperate thirsts of his drought-stricken […]
Continue ReadingFollowing his lead role in the cult sci-fi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie adapted the look of his part Thomas Jerome Newton and transformed him into the sinister Duke – a pale, emotionless, Teutonic aristocrat sporting swept-back orange hair and a monochromatic cabaret-style outfit.
Continue Reading. Few institutions have aroused fascination and mockery in such equal measure as the Eurovision Song Contest. Staged by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956, it is easily the longest-running televised competitive annual musical event. Each year most of the nations of Europe, plus one or two others besides, vie for the prize of […]
Continue ReadingIf you are fortunate enough to have a da Vinci or a Rembrandt hanging in your lobby you are unlikely ever to want for much. But what do you think would be the going rate for a Sexton? Far from being a painter, Sexton Blake of course was a fictional detective. And being a Londoner, […]
Continue ReadingBeing 58 is the first of a series of booklets through which I hope to create some context for my already-published novel, set in 1976, entitled The Best Year Of Our Lives.
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