History of England 1-6

In 1958, T. H. White offered a quite different vision of the past and of how it should be interpreted. Like Tolkien, he was an academic, and unappeasable loathing for the cant of politicians and the horrors of imperialism also bind the two. But there the comparisons cease. Where The Lord of the Rings progressed from being a story for children to a novel for adults to a romance for our ancestors, The Once and Future King was postmodernist, which so soon after modernism was a remarkable feat. A picaresque version of the story of King Arthur, it subverts everything possible in the revered legend. Here, Arthur is ‘Wart’, an idealistic but callow boy who is to be sent to Oxford in the Dark Ages. Merlyn is an eccentric tutor with birds in his hair, whose wisdom comes from having lived backwards.

Beneath the aphorisms and persiflage, White’s book hews its way into the rotten heart of statecraft and of power. Anachronisms abound, and the last is the most terrible. Mordred’s troops use shells on London, at which juncture Arthur knows that the age of chivalry is truly dead. In time, ‘fantasy’ would be the lazy catch-all term for this genre. It is one that both authors would have rejected – they were addressing reality.

37

Riots of passage

In an age renowned for its dourness, foliage seemed to sprout from the furniture. Roses were stitched on bedspreads, lilies on sofas and orchids on ‘pouffes’. Images of the countryside enriched an increasingly suburban England. That the countryside was in retreat lent the fashion an added poignancy. But if interiors had become cosier, public spaces had grown unforgiving. The ersatz opulence of rose-scattered sofas was met by a countertrend in public spaces, owing much to the new severity of American and continental fashions. Clean, sharp lines were favoured in cafes, clubs and office blocks, as if the world of science fiction had already landed.

Another group of angry young men began to appear; they may have been rebels without causes, but they possessed flags and war cries in abundance. In 1953, vague references to the ‘New Edwardian style’ sharpened to a name: the Teddy boys had arrived. They bore little relation to the clean, pretty boys of the Eighties who would wear bright colours and winsome smiles – the ‘Teds’ of the Fifties did not set out to please. It had begun as an upper-class trend. After the war, tailors had attempted to encourage trade by resurrecting the fashions of the Edwardian era. Their market was the wealthy, but workingclass teenagers developed a taste for the new style. How could they afford it? Either by paying in instalments or by sticking to the cheapest but most distinctive items of the look. Its prodigality spoke of a new phenomenon in an affluent working class. The Teds did not merely copy the clothing of the 1900s – they parodied it, adding elements such as the ‘zoot suit’ favoured by black gangs in the United States. A mirage of respectability would become the conduit for rebellion. Quickly, and cheerfully, they established a reputation for violence. The Garston ‘blood baths’ of Liverpool, where Teddy boy gangs regularly clashed, were infamous.

But not all teenage boys were Teds, and not all Teds were members of gangs. The stigma was largely unearned; it was, above all, a style. More significant was the role of the press in creating that stigma. English youth had been cynosures of disapproval since the glory days of the apprentices in the seventeenth century. The Teds were heirs to the apprentices, in spirit if not in diligence, and thus a fear of supposedly feral youth was again coaxed from its cave. No one who stood out in those days could be trusted, particularly when they wore a costume which was considered to be ‘as outlandish as it was sinister’.

Here, Edwardian elegance was twisted. In place of fob watches, the Teds sported bicycle chains, their purpose unsettlingly clear. The tight ‘drainpipe’ trousers stopped just below the ankle. Broad, crêpe-covered ‘beetle-crushers’ stood in place of brogues. And then there was the famous hairstyle, on which two birds made their mark: a cockatoo’s comb in front and a ‘duck’s arse’ behind. Just as the last strands of aristocratic influence were falling between the shears, the dandy had been resurrected, though now he was workingclass.

And in this perhaps lay the true offence. For though it was only ever hinted at, many must have felt that it was simply not ‘proper’ for the working classes to ape the dress of their betters. Swinging their chains, combing their hair, locking and unlocking their razors, the Teds paced the streets. Their uniform was their own rather than the garb of a trade, for they had no trade. Thus we may truly speak of the first teenage ‘style’, not that they were in the slightest measure revolutionary. If anything, they could show a vein of fascism. Events later in the decade were to bear this out.