The Fifties: Don’t romanticise them not even on Valentine’s Day!
Yesterday, I watched two one act plays by Terrence Rattigan at the Oxford Playhouse. They took me back to the fifties like a time machine!
When I interviewed Sir Roger Bannister he said to me, ‘I don’t understand those who are nostalgic about the fifties.’ It was his opinion that life, for most, improved from the sixties on. There were some good times and they included Roger’s breaking the Four Minute Mile, the ascent of Everest and the Coronation of Elizabeth 2. But when it came to everyday life and societal attitudes, I so agree with him. I reviewed, for The Oxford Times, his memoir Twin Tracks and it was his description of life in the fifties that stays with me.Twin Tracks review
When writing the Appetiser to my memoir, I wrote,
‘I was born on a cold grey day in December 1945, in Luton, in a house, like everyone’s in the district, without central heating and where hot water was so precious that the immersion heater was switched on for only two hours a day. The men had just come back from the war and the women left their jobs to devote themselves to home, husband and children. Everyone in the street was white.
My working-class childhood was three changes of clothes, a few toys and privilege. I was English and therefore had inherited the earth. In Hart Lane junior school on Empire Day, my teacher, Mr Watson, pinned a map to the blackboard and pointed out to all fifty of us that two thirds of the earth was coloured pink. ‘The most extensive empire the world had ever seen,’ he said as he moved his stick to a small island off the northern coast of Europe, ‘is ruled from here.’ We were taught Kipling’s view of the world: East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. That was about to change. Post World War 2 new immigrants from all corners of the globe explained their presence: We’re here because you were there.’
And most of those optimistic hardworking people were subject to cruel racism just because of the colour of their skin. I can empathise with last Sunday’ episode of Call the Midwife when Jamaican born Nurse Hyland advised her white colleague not to date the black pastor. She explained that life will be very hard & you’ll be treated like your husband. I can testify to the truth of that advise. The Rattigan reminded me of the class discrimination as well as attitudes to sex, women working and diversity. For Shepherd.com ‘Call the Midwife’ was one of the memoirs I recommended.
https://shepherd.com/best-books/memoirs-which-help-us-understand-the-world
Below the launch poster 2023!
