PoliticalCartoons.com Homepage. PoliticalCartoons.com Homepage. The Lost World of 1962 - Dominic Sandbrook. Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain - Episode 3 (Pt 2) Learning Zone Class Clips - Politicians and the constructed image - Media Studies Video. Comment on Learning Zone clip. Sixties Britain. In October 1965, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, officially opened London's new Post Office Tower. A gleaming cylinder of metal and glass, the tower could hardly have been a more fitting symbol of the scientific optimism of a self-consciously 'go-ahead' decade.
It was a monument not just to the white heat of the technological revolution, but to the sheer self-confidence of a society basking in unprecedented prosperity. From the new tower blocks springing up in cities across the country to the radios in teenagers' bedrooms, from Beatles hits and Bond films to comprehensive schools and nuclear power stations, Sixties Britain seemed - superficially at least - to be a country reborn in the crucible of affluence. In some ways, the cliches of the 1960s ring absolutely true. Beneath the glamorous veneer of swinging London, however, Britain under Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson remained a remarkably conservative, even anxious society.