That Was Satire That Was

Forty years ago, at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, four young men - Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett - walked on to a stage and changed the face not merely of British comedy but of social attitudes in this country. BEYOND THE FRINGE was iconoclastic, fracturing the 'culture of deference' which had predominated in the 1950s. It was the forerunner of an explosion of satire which included The Establishment Club, PRIVATE EYE and the BBC's daring weekly satire show, THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS. Award-winning biographer Humphrey Carpenter evokes the atmosphere of 60's Britain and the social and political conditions which enraged and inspired the satirists, and brings vibrantly alive this amusing but also key period of British cultural life.