Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The 1948 Olympic Games were held in London, the first since the Berlin Games
of 1936, and were known as the “Austerity Games” because rationing was still in
force. The Olympics took place largely in the old Wembley Stadium, with 59 nations
participating. The new Wembley Stadium is a venue for the 2012 Olympic Games,
and tours are available. You can also see international sport and the world's biggest
bands there.
George Orwell's novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four
was published in 1949, warning about
the perils of centralized government and coining the phrase “Big Brother,” but the
1950s brought a new optimism. The 1951 Festival of Britain celebrated British indus-
try, arts, and sciences on London's
South Bank
(p. 104), a bomb site from World
War II. The Royal Festival Hall is now a concert hall with regular free foyer events.
It is part of the South Bank Centre, which includes the Queen Elizabeth Hall music
venue, the Hayward Gallery, the British Film Institute's BFI Southbank, and the
National Theatre.
King George VI died unexpectedly of lung cancer in 1952 and Queen Elizabeth
came to the throne, the symbol of a new era. This is illustrated by the “kitchen sink”
novels of the period focusing on the new social mobility. John Braine's 1957 novel,
Room at the Top,
about a young man's attempt to escape the working class, became
the first of Britain's “New Wave” films in 1959. Braine was one of a dozen or so writ-
ers and novelists labeled “angry young men” after the 1956 John Osborne play
Look
Back in Anger
, which was filmed in 1959. Find out more at the
National Media
Museum
in Bradford (p. 636).
The Great Train Robbery of 1963, when £2.6 million was stolen in used bank notes
from the Glasgow-to-London mail train, is as much a part of English folklore now as
the Hole in the Wall gang of the American Wild West. Numerous topics and televi-
sion documentaries have been made about the robbery, including the 1988 film
Buster,
starring Phil Collins and Julie Walters.
Also in 1963, the Profumo Affair (Secretary of War John Profumo's affair with
model Christine Keeler, a friend of a Soviet naval attaché) caused a scandal. Assigna-
tions took place at Lord Astor's
Cliveden House
in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. It was
once the home of high society and visited by British monarchs since the early 18th
century. It's now a hotel, but the grandiose gardens and beautiful woodlands, owned
by the National Trust, are open year-round (p. 205).
The rock-and-roll music of the 1950s was falling out of fashion by the mid-1960s,
but motor bike-riding rockers were still going strong and in 1964 they fought with
2
A Great British Top 10
“England Swings”
Roger Miller (1965)
“Scarborough Fair”
Simon and Garfunkel (1966)
“Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever”
The Beatles (1967)
“Waterloo Sunset”
The Kinks (1967)
“Streets of London”
Ralph McTell (1969)
“Grantchester Meadows”
Pink Floyd (1970)
“Solsbury Hill”
Peter Gabriel (1977)
“(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea”
Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1978)
“London Calling”
The Clash (1979)
“(Waiting For You and) England to Return”
Stackridge (2009)
