Viva Biba

• Very Heaven: Looking back at the 1960s edited by Sara Maitland
  Virago, 227 pp, £4.95, October 1988, ISBN 0 86068 958 1

We now speak of the decades of this century in a recognised code. We see, or try not to see, the Thirties in the Eighties; we settle with relief into sentimentality about the Sixties. This was, after all, the time when the middle-aged men and women who colour British public opinion were young, hopeful and sexually active. Is it the decade that they now mourn and celebrate, or the charm of their lost young selves?