Thursday 24 March 2016

Discovering a little of our common past from the 1950s

Now there are plenty of ways of exploring the history of the 1950s and I do spend a fair amount of time looking back at that decade.

After all I was coming up to my tenth birthday as the decade closed.

All of which makes me one of those “baby boomers” who in the words of Polly Toynbee are a “favoured generation.”

We grew up in a period of mounting prosperity, confident that we would be looked after from “cradle to grave” and were free from the world wars and economic depression which had been the experience of our parents and grandparents who in turn were determined to make our lives safer than theirs had been.

And so years of that decade was on balance an optimistic time laying down much of the consumerism, and cultural excitement we attribute to the “swinging 60s.”

Of course as a child much of that passed me by but I had the Eagle Comic which its companions, Girl, Swift and Robin offered up both entertainment and a lot of information from cut out drawings of steam locomotives and aeroplanes to careers with the Coal Board and Covent Garden.

All of which leaves me nicely to Eagle Times which is a celebration of that comic and of the 1950s.*

It is a journal I keep coming back to because it contains articles pictures and references about what we kids read, did and bought and for that it’s a pretty neat bit of history.

The latest edition is out now and as they say is packed full of stuff and reminds me that

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”**

Of course the downside is that I creak a lot and there are fewer years ahead than behind but like that optimistic decade I shall look forward and wait for the summer edition.***

Location; the 1950s

Pictures; cover of Eagle Times, Vol 29 nu 1, Spring 2016

*Eagle Times, http://eagle-times.blogspot.co.uk/

**French Revolution As it Appeared to Enthusiast at its Commencement, William Wordsworth, composed 1805, published 1809

***Eagle Timeshttp://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Eagle%20Times

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