Illustration by Martin O’Neill

I may be the only one who believes that Labour edged to its narrow four-seat majority in the 1964 general election because of the Beatles. For most of 1963, the prime minister to be, Harold Wilson, had been talking of a new Britain – on the move from the antiquated, public-school-dominated establishment represented by the aristocratic prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home, to a country characterised by youth, dynamism, mobility and innovation. But where was the proof of the “dead wood” being cleared, of a New Jerusalem brought into being? The Anglo-French treaty to collaborate on the supersonic Concorde was signed in 1962, but there was little to show for it even after construction started in 1965. The most modern weapons system, TSR2, another symbol of a new world, was just about to be cancelled. The economy was subject to repeated cycles of stop-go.…