Cries and whispers | 23 September 2009

The habit of dividing the past into centuries or decades might be historiographically suspect, but by now it seems unavoidable. And it is possible that, because we now expect decades to have flavours of their own, they end up actually having them. We change our behaviour when the year ends in 0. Can there be anyone who has never used ‘The Twenties,’ ‘The Thirties,’ ‘The Fifties’ or ‘The Sixties’ as historical shorthand, expecting his interlocutor to know exactly what he means by it?

By comparison with the Sixties, the flavour of the Seventies is indistinct and muted. Everyone is agreed that, for better or worse, the Sixties now represent the breakdown of social restraints on personal behaviour; but what do the Seventies represent in popular imagination? This is the question that Francis Wheen sets out to answer in his breezy and readable, but superficial, account of these years.