The 1965 article that declared London the most interesting place in the world

By: Max Décharné / The Daily Telegraph
Translation: Telegrafi.com

On April 16, 1965, the weekend magazine The Daily Telegraph-it had a leading article written by John Crosby, entitled “London: The Most Exciting City”, which declared: “Suddenly, the young are the masters of the city”, and claimed that this was now the place “where everything happens, the most joyful, the most irresistible city – and, in a sense, completely new, very modern – the most interestingly elegant city in the world”.

Crosby, a well-known American journalist and television critic, was the London correspondent for New York Herald Tribune and lived on the Kings Road in Chelsea, at the heart of everything that had become fashionable. What made his article particularly significant was that it was published a full year before the article that is usually considered the main instigator of the legend of “Swinging London” of the mid-60s – the magazine’s famous cover Team, April 1966, with the title “London: Swinging City”.

Both of these articles reflected a shift in popular culture that had been building since the middle of the previous decade, and which became apparent with the success in America of many British bands of the "British Invasion" era, especially The Beatles.

The first signs began around 1955, when the UK skiffle craze prompted many young people to pick up guitars and try their hand at making their own music, and Mary Quant opened her first boutique on Kings Road. At the time, pop music was expected to come only from America, and innovative fashions only from the catwalks of Paris, but by the early part of the following decade, British bands were gradually appearing on the charts around the world, and Quant’s new styles were making their mark on the world – as she explained in an interview with me in 2004:

"Since 1962 I started designing clothes and underwear for the American chain of stores, JC Penney – as well as for my personal collection Mary Quant"I traveled to New York every month, and I loved it."

The year 1962 also brought the premiere of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, based on the million-selling novels by Ian Fleming. Fleming grew up in Chelsea, and the fictional spy in his books lived in an unnamed square off the Kings Road. Sean Connery, the star of the new film series, lived in cheap rented flats in the area in the late 50s, and John Barry composed most of the classic Bond themes, such as Goldfinger, in his apartment in nearby Cadogan Square. This attractive, bold, and bitingly humorous film actor appeared on the scene just as the waves of more realistic, gritty films [known as kitchen sinks], were starting to fade.

Many of the latter were directors who had begun their careers in 1956 at the Theatre Royal in Sloane Square, at the east end of King's Road, inspired by the culture shock caused by John Osborne's debut play for the resident company, To remember with anger [Look Back in Anger]. By clearly departing from the usual middle- or upper-class settings and placing working-class characters at the center of the action, these plays and films – along with the anti-heroes featured in the so-called “Angry Young Men” novels of the late 50s – helped pave the way for the figures of the 60s on screen, in the music charts, and in popular culture more broadly, who spoke out and no longer followed the old rules.

A prime example of this was a group of ragged boys in 1962 who lived in the dirtiest part of Kings Road, in a dingy apartment, and who performed wherever they were allowed to play their version of American rhythm and blues. John Gunnell, who, with his brother Rick, ran the Flamingo Club on Ward Street, told me that at one point during that period he had booked the band for a month of shows on Monday nights, but had to cancel them after the first night because they didn’t bring in an audience. The Rolling Stones were undeterred, however, and within two years they had gone from Chelsea to the top of the US music charts.

John Crosby originally intended to title his article Telegraphof 1965, Rhythmic London [Swinging London], and a year earlier he had informed the readers of his column in New York Herald Tribune that Britain was a "swinging" nation. After the publication of the famous article on the cover of the magazine Team In 1966, the American media descended en masse on London looking for new stories and, at one point during that year, as Mary Quant told me, “American magazines and television were often shooting both sides of the Kings Road at the same time.”

Team declared that “in a once quiet world of fading splendor, everything new, liberated and strange is flourishing at the pinnacle of London life”, and Kings Road seemed the epicentre of everything that was heralded as “groovy”

"Saturday afternoon in Chelsea, at the restaurant The Rêve. Grabbing a quick lunch, are some of the city's most engaged young people: Actor Terence Stamp, 26, star of Collectors [The Collector] and linked to model Jean Shrimpton; actor Michael Caine, 33, the Mozart-adoring spy in IPCRESS file [The Ippress File]; hairdresser [Vidal] Sassoon, 38, whose cuts are seen on both [fashion designer André] Courrèges in Paris and Princess Meg [Margaret]; celebrity photographer David Bailey, 27, a professional associate of Antony Armstrong-Jones; and Doug Hayward, 28, Chelsea's most 'voiced' private tailor.

Much of the attention on this fashion trend capital was met with predictable derision from Londoners themselves and from [magazine] satirists. Private Eye, who printed a mock supplement “The Vibrant England Supplement for the General Purpose of Excitement” to help “that very small number of American periodicals which had not yet published their 24-page report on the rhythmic, vibrant, furious new England, where even amphibious boats wear miniskirts, etc.” Even the letters to the editor section of Team-it received scathing reactions from Britons, including one who wrote: "For the funniest generalizations of the year, you really deserve to get in the groove. All of you. But not in London."

Despite this irony, the image of the capital as a source of inspiration for the burgeoning pop culture of the '60s would continue to spread throughout the decade, through numerous fashion articles, books such as Len Dayton's London file [Len Deighton's London Dossier], Rhythmic London – a guide to where the excitement is [Swinging London – A Guide to Where the Action Is] by Karl Dallas, or attractive light novels like Beautiful spies [The Dolly Dolly Spy] by Adam Diment. Adding to this myth were hundreds of famous rock stars, including Chelsea resident Keith Richards, in velvet jackets and expertly cut scarves from the boutique. Granny Takes a Trip in Kings Road, movies like Alfi [Alfie] or swelling [Blow-Up], as well as London television series such as Avengers [The Avengers, now shot in color for the American market] and by a flurry of magazine articles praising or criticizing the myth of Rhythmic London.

As for the man who, with his article in The Telegraph helped spark this hysteria, Liverpool Echo reported in June 1966 that "Crosby today sheepishly acknowledges the paternity of the rhythmic movement, but says he was simply trying to make fun of a small aspect of English life." And, faced with the opportunity to be interviewed by Paris Match for another article on this topic, Crosby himself ironically pointed out: "When the French come to England to ask an American about sex in London, that's when you realize the end of the world has come." /Telegraph/