The fifties. What do they conjure up? Women with impossibly tiny waists and conical breasts, wholesome kitchens where Mummy rather contradictorily seems to be using all the latest products of a fledgling consumer industry, effortlessly balancing the requirements of comfort-loving husband, rosy-cheeked children and her own beauty-queen status? Or rows of back-to-back houses with outside privies and families still five to a room, where donkey-stoning was the hallmark of domestic efficiency and motherly pride? Existentialist black polo-necked jumpers, Italian espresso cafes, and French film? Buddy Holly, Teddy boys, milk bars and “Rock Around the Clock”? McCarthyism, the space race, UFOs over Los Alamos and the Aldermaston marches? The answer is, of course, all of these, and more