All Dressed Up

Sixties and the Counterculture

By Jonathon Green

1998

First Published

4.17

Average Rating

482

Number of Pages

14H43M

Audio Length

Jonathon Green's oral history of the sixties 'underground', "Days in the Life", has been until now the most complete account of that celebrated - and much maligned - decade. In "All Dressed Up" he expands on that book to provide a fascinating and controversial overview of the cultural and political events of the decade. Comprehensive, detailed, often hilarious, this will be the definitive account of the sixties in Britain, challenging the myths fostered by those who were there and enlightening those who were not. Green's sixties begin with the invention of the 'teenager', with the Teds, the Beats and CND; they end with the OZ trial and with two of the decade's most lasting the women's movement and gay politics. In between his focus is on the whole panoply of that extraordinary decade, from sex, drugs and rock'n'roll to student protest, the anti-Vietnam movement and the radical social legislation - on abortion, obscenity, homosexuality and corporal punishment - pioneered by Roy Jenkins. The underground press, the Arts Lab 'Swinging London', Anti-psychiatry, the hippie trail, the festivals, the drug busts - Green surveys them all with affectionate but critical eye, celebrating the prevailing optimism of the sixties while remaining far from blind from its absurdities.

Avg Rating

4.17

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

39%

4 STARS

39%

3 STARS

22%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Jonathon Green

Author · 17 books

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. I am a lexicographer, that is a dictionary maker, specialising in slang, about which I have been compiling dictionaries, writing and broadcasting since 1984. I have also written a history of lexicography. After working on my university newspaper I joined the London ‘underground press’ in 1969, working for most of the then available titles, such as Friends, IT and Oz. I have been publishing books since the mid-1970s, spending the next decade putting together a number of dictionaries of quotations, before I moved into what remains my primary interest, slang. I have also published three oral histories: one on the hippie Sixties, one on first generation immigrants to the UK and one on the sexual revolution and its development. Among other non-slang titles have been three dictionaries of occupational jargon, a narrative history of the Sixties, a book on cannabis, and an encyclopedia of censorship. As a freelancer I have broadcast regularly on the radio, made appearances on TV, including a 30-minute study of slang in 1996, and and written columns both for academic journals and for the Erotic Review. My slang work has reached its climax, but I trust not its end, with the publication in 2010 of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three volume, 6,200-page dictionary ‘on historical principles’ offering some 110,000 words and phrases, backed up by around 410,000 citations or usage examples. The book covers all anglophone countries and its timeline stretches from around 1500 up to the present day. For those who prefer something less academic, I published the Chambers Slang Dictionary, a single volume book, in 2008. Given that I am in no doubt that the future of reference publishing lies in digital form, it is my intention to place both these books on line in the near future.