Ian Fleming's novels, beginning with 1953's Casino Royale, had depicted Bond as a broadly reactionary figure. Like The Beatles, the cinematic James Bond established a new model for British life. Two years later, Heath's party had duly been voted out of office and The Beatles were at Buckingham Palace to collect their MBEs. John Lennon shot back, "We're not gonna vote for Ted". The Conservative politician Ted Heath, then-Lord Privy Seal and future Prime Minister, snobbishly remarked in 1963 that he found it hard to recognise the Beatles' Liverpudlian accents as "the Queen's English". Much of the British establishment had no idea what had hit them. Love Me Do peaked at 17 in the UK charts, the first step in a meteoric rise to unprecedented heights of celebrity. In this new, vibrant world The Beatles symbolised and implied, everyone mattered, and everyone was welcome to take part in the fun." And given the way that young women featured in the band's early history – including their devout, female fanbase – it was a future that also included women as key players. "The Beatles demonstrated that trying something new and channelling your talents – no matter your background or who you were – could be a winning combination. "The band's unique sound and image suggested to young audiences that success did not mean following a prescribed path," Christine Feldman-Barrett, author of A Women's History of the Beatles, tells BBC Culture. Their appearance was startlingly androgynous, their accents undiluted, and their followers adoring. As working-class, northern English musicians with little formal training, The Beatles defied all preconceived notions of where great art could emerge. The sudden fall of the imperial status quo, along with a growing consumer society, set the stage for a radical transformation of British values, spearheaded by popular culture. They gave us examples of who we wanted to be." This is where Bond and The Beatles – and the embrace of the modern – came in. The story we told ourselves was one of Britannia ruling the waves, and the sun never setting on the British Empire. "During the previous couple of centuries, we knew what we were – a global empire. "Britain at that point needed a new story and a new way of understanding itself," John Higgs, author of Love and Let Die: Bond, The Beatles and the British Psyche, tells BBC Culture. Within Britain, the years immediately following World War Two were marked by austerity, while the Suez crisis of 1956 made it painfully clear that the UK was no longer the political or military superpower it had long prided itself on being. As Ian MacDonald writes in Revolution in the Head, his seminal history of The Beatles' records and the sixties, the release of Love Me Do "blew a stimulating autumnal breeze through an enervated pop scene, heralding a change in the tone of post-war British life matched by the contemporary appearance of the first James Bond film, Dr No…" The serendipity of this moment probably passed entirely unnoticed at the time, but the world we inhabit today is still enjoying its aftershocks. They were also, incredibly, born on the same day – 5 October 1962 – with the release of the first Beatles single, Love Me Do, and the premiere of the first James Bond picture, Dr No. These two great pop cultural phenomena would help to redefine Britain and Britishness for a receptive global audience. "London is not keeping the good news to itself… London is exporting its plays, its films, its fads, its styles, its people."Ĭhief amongst these cutting-edge cultural exports were the music of The Beatles and the films of James Bond. It swings it is the scene… The city is alive with birds (girls) and Beatles, buzzing with mini cars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement," she wrote in April 1966. Time Magazine correspondent Piri Halasz captured the mood vividly "In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. This was only the beginning of a liberating cultural revolution that would eventually sweep the world, with "swinging" London as its wellspring. "Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three… / Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban / And the Beatles' first LP." So wrote Philip Larkin in his 1967 poem Annus Mirabilis, reflecting on how British society was transformed in the early 1960s.
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