The Rat In The Python

If you haven't heard of a liberty bodice, believe that half-a-crown is something to do with impoverished royalty and never had the experience of slapping a television to stop the grainy black and white picture from rolling, then this series might not be for you. Please give it a go, though - I suspect that most of it will still resonate no matter where you were brought up! Book 3 looks at fashion and how it's changed since the end of WWII. From utility coats and twinsets, to schoolboys in short trousers with socks and garters. From the swinging sixties with its long, long hair and short, short skirts, to psychedelia and beyond.

The Rat in the Python is about Baby Boomers who, in the stability following the Second World War, formed a statistical bulge in the population python. It is a personal snapshot of a time that is as mystifying to my children as the Jurassic Era - and just as unrecognisable.

My intention is to nudge some long-forgotten memories to the surface, test your own recollections and provide information and statistics to put it all in context.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin...