Uploaded September 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s – from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas – contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories – and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century.
About the author: Rob Young is the author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music and All Gates Open: The Story of Can. He is the editor of Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music and The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music. A former editor of The Wire magazine, he also contributes to Uncut, Guardian, Sight & Sound, Art Review and Frieze.
The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s – from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas – contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories – and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century.
About the author: Rob Young is the author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music and All Gates Open: The Story of Can. He is the editor of Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music and The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music. A former editor of The Wire magazine, he also contributes to Uncut, Guardian, Sight & Sound, Art Review and Frieze.
