1966 the golden year of football
1966 is the year when London was swinging, the Beatles and the Stones were at their height of their popularity and there was full employment and England’s football team was on the verge to make history.
Peter Chapman’s humble beginnings in a grammar school in Islington, taught him to be sporty and had the gift of the gab., as he steers readers to the conclusion that Britain was getting over the post-second world war dowdiness.
Out of Time describes the attractions of London music scene, Chinese cuisine, and holidays abroad. He describes the football history by showing the limits of change and how opportunities were circumvented and aspirations were regulated. This book also highlights the late adolescence of social outlook of 1966 and the micro-milieu around the family home in Noel Road, Islington. Jayne Mansfield and her husband appear in a black car outside the print factory at the top of the road, a bomb crater is filled by luxury flats owned by celebrity publisher Anthony Blond, and Lord Kagan arrives every weekend in a Jaguar to stay with his mistress and two men living together up the road are Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton.
Chapman’s intimate nostalgic perspective on football low life. He was seeking desperately famous players in London hotels and many of them seem keen to hang around. Nobody expected England to do well in the World Cup as they were the underdogs, apart from the manager Alf Ramsey. But as England were improving, they got lucky helped by the spacing of fixtures and choice of venues and referees. Chapman charts history as chronological collage and events pass by like the Rhodesia crisis, the theft of the World Cup trophy, the Aberfan disaster, and Britains eventual relative economic decline. He reveals how Britain had the best of everything in the world post-war – finest Army, air force, empire, motorbikes, goalkeepers.
Above all, Out of Time is a captivating Portrait of the Summer of 1966 -as a man, a team, a country all teetered on the cusp of momentous change.
Out Of Time:1966 and the End of Old-fashioned Britain by Peter Chapman Bloomsbury £ 18.99, 288 pages.