Sixties Britain: the cultural politics of historiography

This chapter provides a critical survey of recent historical accounts of Sixties Britain, particularly those texts that intersect with wider memory discourses about the Sixties as being a 'decade of protest'. Its primary function is to provide a framing historiographical analysis for the book's subsequent chapters, each of which problematizes a more specifically defined aspect of Sixties British culture, social change or political activism. Its secondary function is to discuss possible ways in which readers can orient themselves in relation to a field of historical writing where interpretive disputes have become more than matters of academic interest.