History of England 1-6

The opponents in the final were West Germany. Joshing in the press about two other recent conflicts could not conceal the lack of real anti-German animus in the population – if anything, the German economic miracle of the post-war years had attracted admiration. The two sides were similar in many respects, tending to persistence rather than flair. The Germans scored first, a setback that served only to prick the torpor of the England side. England first equalized, then drew ahead. In the last frenetic ten minutes, the game became a true contest. The Germans drew level with one minute to go, and then the whistle blew. The English players were almost despairing, but Ramsey recalled them to their duty during extra time. ‘You’ve won the World Cup once,’ he told them. ‘Now go out and win it again.’ What followed proved one of the most controversial goals in history. The ball ricocheted between the German goalposts and at last the goal was given, to huge German protests. There was no debate about the next one, however: with seconds to go, Geoff Hurst lashed the ball into the German net. 4-2. England had won the World Cup.

The players collapsed, wept and embraced. The sun blazed brighter, the fans roared, and Bobby Moore, having wiped his hands before greeting the queen, held aloft the World Cup. The austere Ramsey, delighting in his players’ happiness, doffed his usual reserve and kissed the trophy.

With its new mandate, and despite a deeply unpopular austerity programme, Wilson’s government could at last begin its social programme in earnest. And so, after a long and often bitter battle, the efforts of Wolfenden, Lord Acton and their colleagues were at last vindicated. In 1967, the Sexual Offences Act legalized homosexual relations conducted in private between consenting adults over the age of twenty-one. Amidst the relief, joy and outrage, the act also provided some light comedy. In later years, a cartoon appeared, showing two middle-aged men in a bed, in the open air. Beside them, a police officer remarks: ‘Over 21 you are, consenting you may well be, but I question the privacy of Berkeley Square.’

41

Old lace and arsenic

It is in a sense ironic that 1967 should be remembered as the ‘Summer of Love’; the previous year had produced rather more of that commodity, for it was in 1966 that London had come to flower. The realms of drama, film, art and music glittered with palaces and blazed with gardens. It was the year of Lesley Hornby, a tiny, huge-eyed ghost of a girl better known by her family’s affectionate nickname, ‘Twiggy’. Led, or misled, by her example, young girls strove for a shape that later generations would regard as emaciated.

Twiggy herself was only the newest petal on an unprecedented bloom of English fashion. Indeed, by 1966, even Italy was prepared to offer an only slightly ironic bow to English efforts. Mary Quant was hailed as ‘the queen of the miniskirt’ by Epoca, while boutiques such as ‘Lady Ellen’ and ‘Lord Kingsay’ were to be found in Milan itself. Like many of a Welsh background, Mary Quant had recast herself as English almost at the moment she arrived in London. Her mission was simply ‘to open a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories … sweaters, scarves, shifts, hats, jewellery, and peculiar odds and ends’. This was hardly enough to distinguish her from many other designers, but she went further. She wanted, as she put it, ‘clothes that were much more for life, much more for real people, much more for being young and alive in … clothes to move and run and dance in’. It was to have huge repercussions, not so much for the country itself as for others’ perception of it. The young were the new market, and youth was all. From the King’s Road in Chelsea to the United States, her clothes – bright in colour, sharp in outline, endlessly adaptive – spread over continents. Rightly was Quant named the ‘Queen of Fashion’.

She had imagination and could tease out the silken quality in gingham, tartan, flannel and even PVC, the delight of fetishists. For her, there were no marriages of convenience between material and shape, only love matches. By 1966, she had been awarded the OBE, her companies bringing in more than £6 million a year, and five hundred designs soaring from her sewing machines annually. The boutique style also took off elsewhere, with Carnaby Street as the leader. The new clothes swirled around a new type, and indeed created it: this was the ‘dolly bird’, skinny, girlish, sexually assured and affluent. For despite the gushing of Quant and others, the new trends in fashion lay far beyond the reach of ‘dockers’ wives’. Twiggy herself was unimpressed. ‘Bazaar in the King’s Road,’ she said, ‘was for rich girls.’