Historians can be a smug lot. They will never tire of telling you that decade-upsumming is just a retro-convenience; that any generalisations about its defining characteristics can be instantly undone by equally valid counter-generalisations. The 1950s? Tory complacency but also angry young men. The 1960s? Harold SuperMac and Harold GannexMac; mini and maxi; Quant and Biba. But the habit of imprinting a shape on the memory of a decade goes back in British historical writing at least to chronicles of the “Hungry Forties” of the 19th century: the years of Irish famine and Chartist riots. Bad times, especially, may have come in decimal blocks. No one called the next, more serene, decade (give or take a Crimean war or two) the “Fair Fifties”.
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