Book review: David Kynaston's Deep into the Sixties charts Britain's turbulent mid-1960s

A new review examines Deep into the Sixties: Britain 1965-66, the latest volume in historian David Kynaston's expansive history of postwar Britain, describing it as a vibrant and significant addition to the series.

According to the review, the book opens with an account of civil rights activist Malcolm X's visit to Smethwick in February 1965, where the local Conservative-run council was reportedly planning to purchase houses in order to prevent the area from what officials at the time termed becoming a "coloured ghetto." The review notes that Malcolm X experienced racism firsthand during the visit, including being refused service at a pub, and that his visit drew a hostile reaction from some white residents. He was shot dead in the United States nine days later.

The review argues that Kynaston's book challenges a popular image of mid-1960s Britain as defined primarily by Carnaby Street fashion, the Beatles and cultural liberation, pointing instead to persistent racism during the period, including discriminatory property practices and racist abuse directed at footballers such as Leeds United's Albert Johanneson.

The book reportedly does not overlook the era's cultural shifts, but situates them alongside the slower erosion of attitudes and structures the review characterizes as patriarchal, homophobic, class-divided and bigoted, carried over from the previous decade. Specific cultural and social details cited in the review include changing consumer habits, an increase in civil marriages, shifts in workplace design with the rise of open-plan offices, and symbols of the era's growing modernity such as the Mini Cooper car.

Taken together, the review presents Deep into the Sixties as a wide-ranging social history that captures both the well-known cultural touchstones of the period and the less-examined tensions that persisted beneath them, continuing Kynaston's project of documenting postwar Britain in granular detail.