Billy Cotton

A Guide to British television programmes shown at Christmas time, throughout the years.

‘Adult Reactions to Popular Music and Inter-generational Relations in Britain, 1955–1975’ challenges stereotypes concerning a post-war ‘generation gap’, exacerbated by rebellion-inducing popular music styles, by demonstrating the considerable variety which frequently characterized adult responses to the music, whilst also highlighting that the impact of the music on inter-generational relations was more complex than is often assumed. [NP] Utilizing extensive primary evidence, from first-person accounts to newspapers, television programmes, surveys and archive collections, the book adopts a thematic approach, identifying three key arenas of British society in which adult responses to popular music, and the impact of such reactions upon relations between generations, seem particularly revealing and significant. The book examines in detail the place of popular music within family life and Christian churches and their engagement with popular music, particularly within youth clubs. It also explores ‘encounters’ between the worlds of traditional Variety entertainment and popular music while providing broader perspectives on this most dynamic and turbulent of periods.

This text presents a comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on popular music, from the early 20th century to the present day.

American Graffiti meets The Last Picture Show In the summer of 1963, the country is poised at a historical threshold. The lingering, slower pace of the 1950s still prevails in much of the land, but is beginning to give way to the upscale rhythms of the new decade. On the surface, the small southern California farm town of Cotton seems like a community caught in amber. Life rolls on slowly here, as it has for decades. But in this critical, history-altering year, the nation is on the cusp of a new era that will sweep across it – engulfing even little towns like Cotton with a new, often unsettling wave of unprecedented change. Yet Losing Cotton may not be an entirely bad thing. The older, more staid age must give way to a more flexible one as stagnant social patterns are replaced by more dynamic ones. It is a time of transition for the country, for Cotton, and for the people, white or of color, young or old, rich or poor who inhabit this small desert town and its environs. But they will, they must, make this transition. Time waits for no one, for no place. But like most everyone lucky or unlucky enough to live it, they have to try and find a way to come out the other side. Life goes on for the living whether they like it or not. It’s a matter of fact and not of choice. The future is what each of us chooses to make it.

The hilarious memoir of Britain's best-loved, highly successful comedy writer Eddie Braben, whose scripts for Morecambe and Wise catapulted the incomparable duo to stardom. The key figure behind the success of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, scriptwriter Eddie Braben has written his autobiography - with the inimitable, timeless humour, warmth and affection for Eric and Ernie of that wonderful bygone era which made their classic sketches so successful. From Liverpool to London and on to Snowdonia, Braben peppers his story with wonderful anecdotes about the original straight man and his amiable sidekick. The Book What I Wrote is as much a unique biography of the charismatic Eric and Ernie as it is an autobiography of the man on whose gags their success was made.

Reinforced cloth library binding, no dust jacket, individual shrinkwrap