Adam Hart-Davis explores the world of Britain's 40,000 amateur astronomers. While the last century saw amateurs eclipsed by high technology, increasingly sophisticated home equipment has seen the amateur community enter a new collaborative relationship with the professionals. Contributors include bestselling novelist Terry Pratchett, Colin Pillinger of the Beagle 2 project and the godfather of popular astronomy Patrick Moore.
Documentary recalling the social revolution which swept across Britain from 1946. A new dance craze, the Jitterbug, captured the mood of the country as years of war and austerity were cast off. The film uses archive footage and a soundtrack of classic hits, including music by Louis Jordan, Alma Cogan, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.
Documentary explores the continuing appeal of Sherlock Holmes through his various screen incarnations, from early silent films through the classic portrayals by Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing to the BBC's most recent Rupert Everett version. Contributors include Minette Walters, Kim Newman and Edward Hardwicke.
Daniela Nardini narrates a documentary exploring why the British funeral has acquired a new spirit of informality. Today's departed are just as likely to be sent on their way to the strains of Robbie Williams as they are to a classic hymn. A bewildering array of coffin styles is available, with even an environmentally-friendly wicker casket for the organically-minded. Are we improvising new rituals to fill a more profound vacuum in our secular society?
Time Shift enters the world of table tennis and traces how an English parlour game once known as ‘whiff-whaff’ became the most popular sport in Asia, championed by Mao Zedong and how it almost brought an end to the Cold War. The programme revisits the glory days of table tennis in the 1930s and 1940s, when thousands packed Wembley Stadium in London to watch heroes like Johnny Leach do battle with the greats of Europe. It researches how a simple bat made of sponge changed the game forever in 1952 and the programme interviews one of the game’s mavericks, the New York hustler Marty ‘the Needle’ Reisman.
Playful viewer's guide to entering another dimension, narrated by Richard Ayoade, featuring some of TV and cinema's best-known alternate universes, from the likes of Star Trek, Sliders, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Futurama and Doctor Who.
A comic exploration of the cult of Dracula. From Bela Lugosi to bloodsucking bikes, with a Mexican tag-wrestling version thrown in for good measure, this ghoulish compilation is an entertaining homage to the vampire tradition gifted us by Bram Stoker's famous Count.
Bill Nighy narrates a documentary telling the story of the long and often extraordinary relationship between fact and fiction in the mysterious world of British espionage. The programme charts the evolution of spying through the twentieth century and looks at the parallel development of spy fiction during the same period. Contributors include Stella Rimington, Daphne Park, David Shayler, John le Carre, Charlie Higson, Bernard Porter, Nick Hiley and Stephen Dorril.
Documentary, narrated by Caroline Quentin, looking at how and why weddings are on the increase and divorce rates in decline in the UK. It asks if we've rediscovered love and romance or if we're just getting swept along by the hype of celebrity weddings and the marketing powers of the mushrooming wedding industry.
Documentary which celebrates the high and lows of children's TV and asks if the future of mainstream television be one where children are neither seen nor heard, as ITV cuts back on its commitment and the BBC now only makes programmes for under-11s.
In conversation with writer and broadcaster Andrew Collins, the creators of the time-travel cop show Life on Mars reveal the story behind the series, including their seven-year battle to bring it to the screen and how they drew inspiration from their own experiences of life in the 70s. They offer insights into the show's characters and explore how the programme has broken the mould of popular TV drama.
An exploration of how Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code was able to influence popular culture and challenge the traditional view of Christianity, thus to be attacked by the church, the art world and academics.
Over the past sixty years, a university education has gone from being the preserve of the privileged few to an expected rite of passage for more than a million young adults a year. This spectacular expansion transformed the expectations of generations and provided the crucible for everything from sexual liberation to political revolution, and it inspired a unique literary phenomenon rich in controversy and comedy - the campus novel.
Daisy Donovan narrates a documentary looking at the rollercoaster fortunes of robots, androids and cyborgs in fact and fantasy, from the Flash Gordon serials via the Six Million Dollar Man to Marvin the Paranoid Android. For decades we were alternately warned that robots could take over the planet or promised that they would liberate us from the drudgery of everyday labour, but in the real world scientists struggled to design robots that could even climb the stairs. Yet the continued appeal of the Star Wars films, the remake of the TV classic A for Andromeda and the return of the Cybermen to Doctor Who all prove that there is artificial life in the machine men yet.
Political commentator Andrew Marr assesses what it takes to be a successful British premier based on the performance of the twenty prime ministers of the 20th century.
Since its earliest days, television has looked to radio comedy for the 'next big thing'. Radio hits from Hancock's Half-Hour to Little Britain have become TV classics. But other long-running radio favourites have died a death on the screen. So what makes for a sure-fire transfer?
Radio 2 was created out of the old Light Programme, but the modern station, with its targeted playlists and big-name DJs like Jonathan Ross and Chris Evans, is now light years away from its origins - or is it? In the evenings, small and cherished slots still exist for devotees of Folk, Organ, Jazz, Brass and Light Music. This programme is an affectionate celebration of the unusual and much-loved corners of 88-91FM, of the fans and of those who continue to broadcast to them.
Live performance in which Emmylou Harris presents her ten rules of what makes a great country song, personally chosen from her own extensive repertoire. Filmed in Los Angeles in an intimate venue, the show features songs with Emmylou accompanied by her blue grass band. Each track illustrates one of her 10 Commandments, with a short introduction to explain why it was chosen and what element of country music it best represents.
BBC collection of performances which traces Emmylou Harris's musical development from her first British TV appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test right up to recent UK festival shows. Rarely seen archive from the BBC vaults nestles alongside more widely known material as Harris covers a broad spectrum of styles from country rock to Celtic traditional.
Documentary about the first mass-produced food brands focusing on Perrier water, Cadbury's Dairy Milk, Typhoo tea and Marmite. The tea-tasters of Typhoo explain how their predecessors turned a waste product into a bestseller. Chef Matthew Kay tries out some Edwardian recipes designed for vegetarian marmite fans.
An exploration of the way archaeology has been presented on television over the past 50 years, from panel show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, which made celebrities out of its host Professor Glyn Daniel and resident character Sir Mortimer Wheeler, to Channel 4's contemporary Time Team.
Profile of Mortimer Wheeler, who became the public face of archaelogy for almost 40 years. With the arrival of television in the 1950s, the energetic and charismatic Wheeler became a celebrity and was the first to bring the subject to a mass audience. From Dorset to the Himalayas, from Television Centre to Zimbabwe, a vast array of archive footage shows how Wheeler informed and entertained the viewing public.
Beginning with the rise of Russophobia in Victorian Britain, former MI5 director general Stella Rimington explores our love-hate relationship with Russia over the past 150 years.
Writer Colin Shindler returns to Manchester to revisit his childhood and tell his own intensely personal, boys own story of a paradoxical year, 1957, the one in which prime minister Harold Macmillan declared that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. In the company of leading historians, he takes a snapshot of 1957 to explore what it was really like to live in Never Had It So Good Britain and to find out whether Macmillan was right.
John Inverdale hosts a unique experiment, using the latest football technology, to find out how English football has really changed in the past fifty years. Through computerised analysis it compares every aspect of the FA Cup finals of 2007 and 1957 - the year of the dramatic encounter between Manchester United and Aston Villa. The results uncover a lost era of English football via interviews with the surviving members of the 1957 final and contributors including Tom Finney and Graham Taylor.
Documentary looking at the history and tradition of the British Christmas dinner and the role it still plays. With contributions from actor Simon Callow, cultural critic Jonathan Meades, food writers Paul Levy, Pru Leith and Diana Henry and historians Kate Colquhoun and Kathryn Hughes, it asks why the British remain so wedded to this meal, what it says about us as a nation, and whether it can survive in a changing and culturally diverse Britain of different faiths, food fads and health concerns.
Cultural commentator Peter York takes a look at the changing fortunes of British advertising, through the story of the personalities who led it through its highs and lows. Inspired by the US advertisers of Madison Avenue, a new generation of 1970s British ad men created a unique style of advertising based on authentic British culture which tapped into home-grown humour. But the same combination of ambition, big spending and oversized egos led to a fall when the business climate changed in the 1980s.
In a whistle-stop tour through the history of the US presidency, journalist and author Jonathan Freedland asks what qualities make a great president and what we can learn from the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, JFK or even Richard Nixon about what it takes to make a mark in the White House. Freedland is helped by distinguished contributors including James Naughtie, Shirley Williams, Douglas Hurd, Simon Hoggart and Bonnie Greer, who give frank assessments of some of America's greatest presidents.
Novelist Andrew Martin presents a documentary examining how the train and the railways came to shape the work of writers and film-makers.
Documentary which tells the surprising story of how Britain entered a new age of steam railways after the Second World War and why it quickly came to an end. After the war, the largely destroyed railways of Europe were rebuilt to carry more modern diesel and electric trains. Britain, however, chose to build thousands of brand new steam locomotives. These were designed to stay in service well into the 1970s, but in some cases they were taken off the railways and scrapped within just five years. When Dr Richard Beeching took over British Railways in the 1960s the writing was on the wall, and in 1968 the last steam passenger train blew its whistle. But while steam use declined, steam enthusiasm grew. As many steam engines lay rusting in scrapyards around Britain, enthusiasts raised funds to buy, restore and return them to their former glory. In 2008, the first new steam locomotive to be built in Britain in nearly 50 years rolled off the line, proving our enduring love of these machines.
To mark 100 years of romance publishers Mills and Boon, literary novelist Stella Duffy takes on the challenge of writing for them.
A look at the world of cryptic crosswords, offering up the secrets of these seemingly impenetrable puzzles.
Documentary which celebrates Britain's rich and much-loved tradition of comic songs, from Noel Coward's Mad Dogs and Englishmen to Benny Hill's Ernie, and reveals the skill involved in creating them.
Documentary which takes a provocative and entertaining journey through the BBC's own fashion collection.
Journalist John Harris travels around England to find out why the north-south divide is still an economic reality and if anything can be done to close it.
Paul Atterbury embarks on an alluring journey into the golden age of ocean liners, finding out how these great ships made such a mark on the popular imagination and why they continue to enchant to this day. Paul's voyage takes him around Britain and reveals a story of design, politics, propaganda, Hollywood glamour and tragedy. Along the way, he uncovers some amazing survivals from the liners of the past - a cinema in Scotland built from the interiors of the SS Homeric, a house in Poole in which cabins from the Mauretania are lovingly preserved - as well as the design inspiration behind the first great liners.
Many of the most famous passenger liners in history were built in the British Isles, several in the shipyards along the banks of the Clyde. This series combines personal accounts and archive footage to evoke a vivid picture of the unique culture that grew up in the Clyde shipyards. Despite some of the harshest working conditions in industrial history and dire industrial relations, it was here that the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 were built. Such was the Clyde shipbuilders' pride in their work, and the strength of public support, that in 1971 they were able to defy a government attempt to close them down and win the right to carry on shipbuilding.
Documentary which tells the story of how, in the years following World War 2, countries competed to launch the most magnificent passenger ships on the great ocean routes. National pride and prestige were at stake. The Americans had the United States, the fastest liner of all; the Dutch had the elegant Rotterdam; the Italians had the sleek Michelangelo; the French had the France as their supreme symbol of national culture and cuisine; and Britain had the Queens Mary and Elizabeth. The coming of the jetliner and the 1960s' assault on class and privilege might have swept this world away, but as the film explains, the giant vessels sailed on. Today, more people than ever travel on big ships - liners that have a modern take on glamour and romance.
Many people know the basic rules of chess, but few can play really well. This programme offers some essential tips on how to raise our game. British grandmasters Dan King and Ray Keene go through a special demonstration game from opening gambit to checkmate, revealing the key moves that can lead to victory. They explain the opening, middle and end games, and how to outwit an opponent with techniques such as forks, pins and skewers. Along the way the colourful and diverse world of British chess playing is celebrated, including speed chess and chess boxing, and useful advice is offered on how not to be humiliated by a child prodigy. Also taking part are novelist Martin Amis, writer Dominic Lawson, Britain's youngest grandmaster David Howell and under-16 champion Sheila Dines.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a man whose name was Oliver Postgate. He had a shed where he made things. With his friend Peter Firmin, Oliver created entire worlds for characters including Bagpuss, The Clangers and Ivor the Engine. These stories fired the imaginations of generations of children, and his lullaby voice became a universal reminder of childhood. Time Shift celebrates Oliver Postgate's life and work through a treasury of clips from well-known and rarely seen films, alongside film and photos from the family archive. Fans including Lauren Child (Charlie and Lola) and Andrew Davenport (In the Night Garden) are on hand to heap praise on the man who is such an inspiration for their work. Postgate's family help delve deep into his history and discover the inventions, such as Oliver's old camera adapted with Meccano, that powered his imagined worlds. Co-creator Firmin reveals the story behind his most celebrated characters and introduces his daughter Emily, familiar to millions as the owner of Bagpuss. The documentary also reveals how, as the grandson of Labour leader George Lansbury, Postgate's life was shaped by radical politics. His deeply held beliefs influenced his classic creations, and campaigning became his focus until his death in December 2008.
When Clement Freud died in April 2009, Britain lost not only one of its best-loved broadcasters but also one of its last great polymaths - a man whose long and varied career encompassed being a Liberal MP, cookery expert, newspaper columnist and author. Freud's lugubrious expression and distinctive voice launched him as a TV personality in the 1960s with a series of dog food commercials, but his early life was just as colourful - the grandson of Sigmund Freud, he was a commis chef at the Dorchester Hotel and a liaison officer at the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1946. This documentary draws together interviews with Freud from across four decades, including previously unaired material, to allow him to tell the story of his remarkable life in his own inimitable way.
The aptly-named Tom Baker narrates a tale of aspiration, industrialisation and plain old-fashioned snobbery in a documentary which unwraps the story of the rise of the popular loaf and how it has shaped the way we eat. Historically, to know the colour of one's bread was to know one's place in life. For centuries, ordinary people ate brown bread that was about as easy on the teeth as a brick. Softer, refined white bread was so expensive to make that it became the preserve of the rich. Affordable white bread was the baker's holy grail - but almost as soon as it became possible to achieve, dietary experts began to trumpet the virtues of brown. Not surprisingly, the British public proved reluctant to give up their white loaves, and even a war couldn't change their eating habits.
Novelist Andrew Martin investigates the curious case of absent fathers in fiction. Far from being a repository of fatherly role models, English literature has preferred to do away with dads. If literary fathers survive the first chapter of a novel - which they often don't - their idea of quality time seems to be going off to kill foreigners or sailing round the world. Alternatively, they absent themselves mentally, brooding in their studies, conducting mysterious experiments and generally being keen on activities that can't possibly involve their children.
Documentary which explores the history of British food science, taking a fascinating voyage through over a century of petri-dishes, vitamins and E-numbers. The connection between food manufacturers and the white coat brigade is nothing new. One hundred and fifty years before Heston Blumenthal, Birmingham chemist Alfred Bird was reinventing custard because his wife had an allergy to eggs. By the 1930s, George Orwell was already complaining about the chemical by-products that the British people were eating, but when war gave scientists a chance to remake the British diet the improvement in the nation's health was extraordinary. Charting the growing role that food science has played in our daily lives, we meet Tony Blake, the food scientist who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors, and we learn about biochemist Jack Drummond, the tragic mastermind of British food in the Second World War, who died alongside his family as in a mysterious murder. We discover how vegetarian product Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis and how breakthroughs in flavour chemistry helped create the day-glo processed foods of the 1970s. We recall Margaret Thatcher's early career as a food scientist and find out why there was no such thing as a free lunch when it came to the promise of fat-free snacks Professor Bob Rastall demonstrates how an artificial gut is being used to develop new food ingredients that will inhibit the growth of pathogens in the human gut.
Paris-based cultural historian Andrew Hussey follows his success with France on a Plate by travelling back to his homeland, the north west of England, in search of its lost food culture.
This programme sets out to show that the 60s - the most creative decade of the 20th century - began not in swinging London but in smokestack Northern England. It was from there that a new kind of voice was heard: cocky and defiant, working class, affluent, stroppy and sexy.
Documentary which explores the untold story of how Britain 'went wild' in the 1960s. It shows how the British people fell in love with animals and how, by the end of the decade, wildlife protection had become an intrinsic part of our culture. Before that time people knew very little about endangered species or the natural world - the very word 'environment' was hardly recognised. But the 1960s saw a sea change.
Draw the curtains and dim the lights for a chilling trip north for a documentary which investigates the success of Scandinavian crime fiction and why it exerts such a powerful hold on our imagination. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a literary blockbuster that has introduced millions of readers to the phenomenon that is Scandinavian crime fiction - yet author Stieg Larsson spent his life in the shadows and didn't live to see any of his books published. It is one of the many mysteries the programme investigates as it travels to Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland in search of the genre's most acclaimed writers and memorable characters. It also looks at Henning Mankell's brooding Wallander series, with actor Krister Henriksson describing the challenge of bringing the character to the screen, and it asks why so many stories have a political subtext. The programme finds out how Stieg Larsson based the bestselling Millennium trilogy on his work as an investigative journalist and reveals the unlikely source of inspiration for his most striking character, Lisbeth Salander. There are also segments on Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian rock star-turned-writer tipped to inherit Larsson's mantle, and Karin Fossum, an author whose personal experience of murder has had a profound effect on her writing.
Documentary which profiles a new wave of Italian crime fiction that has emerged to challenge the conventions of the detective novel. There are no happy endings in these noir tales, only revelations about Italy's dark heart - a world of corruption, unsolved murders and the mafia. The programme features exclusive interviews with the leading writers from this new wave of noir, including Andrea Camilleri (creator of the Inspector Montablano Mysteries) and Giancarlo De Cataldo (Romanzo Criminale), who explains how his work as a real-life investigating judge inspired his work. From the other side of the law, Massimo Carlotto talks about how his novels were shaped by his wrongful conviction for murder and years spent on the run from the police. The film also looks at the roots of this new wave. Carlo Emilio Gadda (That Awful Mess) used the detective novel to expose the corruption that existed during Mussolini's fascist regime and then, after the Second World War, Leonardo Sciascia's crime novels (The Day of The Owl) tackled the rise of the Sicilian mafia. These writers established the rules of a new kind of noir that drew on real events and offered no neat endings. Also featuring Italian writers Carlo Lucarelli and Barbara Baraldi, the film uses rarely seen archive from Italian television.
Documentary which takes a glorious journey back to the 1950s, when the coach was king. From its early origins in the charabanc, the coach had always been the people's form of transport. Cheaper and more flexible than the train, it allowed those who had travelled little further than their own villages and towns a first heady taste of exploration and freedom. It was a safe capsule on wheels from which to venture out into a wider world.
Documentary which brings the story of the coach up to date, as it explores the most recent phase of Britain's love affair with group travel on four wheels - from school trips and football awaydays to touring with bands and 'magic bus' overland treks to India. The establishment of the National Coach Company may have standardised the livery and the experience of mainstream coach travel in the 1970s, but a multitude of alternative offerings meant the coach retained its hold on the public imagination, with even striking miners and New Age travellers getting in on a very British act.
Timeshift lifts the veil on the taboo that is corporal punishment. What it reveals is a fascinating history spanning religion, the justice system, sex and education. Today it is a subject that is almost impossible to discuss in public, but it's not that long since corporal punishment was a routine part of life. Surprising and enlightening, the programme invites us to leave our preconceptions at the door so that we may better understand how corporal punishment came to be so important for so long.
Time Shift digs into the archive to trace the extraordinary story of the ultimate sanction. At the beginning of the 19th century you could still be hanged in Britain for offences such as stealing a sheep or shooting a rabbit. Even children as young as seven were sent to the gallows. The last hanging in this country took place as recently as 1964. By opting for a dispassionate history rather than staging the usual polarised debate, the programme breaks new ground with its fascinating attention to detail, such as the protocols of the public execution or the 'science' of hanging. With contributions from both sides of the argument, it provides an essential guide to a subject that still divides us.
It is almost exactly 30 years since the BBC's Rough Justice team began investigating miscarriages of justice. The programme can claim to have achieved the overturning of the convictions of 18 people in 13 separate cases, continuing sporadically for over 25 years until it was finally axed in November 2007. Timeshift looks at the creation of this extraordinary series and reveals what a shock to the system it was. Featuring contributions from many of those involved, it asks how it was that a television programme took it upon itself to question one of the oldest judicial systems in the world.
Timeshift invites you to make a reservation in the world of hotels for the super rich. The Savoy, the Ritz, the Dorchester - the very names of Britain's grand hotels spell luxury around the world. The film charts how luxury hotels have met the needs of new forms of wealth, from aristocrats to rock stars and beyond, with comfort, innovation and, above all, service.
Timeshift explores rarely-seen images from the University of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive to ride back to the origins of the fairground. From the sideshows to the freak shows and early hand-powered rides to the arrival of steam and electricity, the story of fairs is the tale of one of our first forms of popular entertainment. The film shows how fairgrounds often provided the only entertainment to rapidly-expanding industrial towns. It looks at how, from the 50s, the fairground was the site of youth rebellion and why we are still entranced by these travelling carnivals that arrive overnight and then vanish just as mysteriously.
Roll up! Roll up! Join Timeshift under the big top for unique access to the University of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive which tells the story of the circus. From Billy Smart to Gerry Cottle and Archaos to Cirque du Soleil, the documentary captures the appeal of this enduring mass entertainment. Find out what a josser is, discover why clowns are one of the few acts to achieve lasting celebrity and marvel at the sheer spectacle of some of the biggest circuses of all time. In an age when almost every form of popular entertainment owes something to the circus, When the Circus Comes to Town is a nostalgic journey into the origins of one of the ultimate expressions of human athleticism and showmanship.
The surprising story behind the humble picture postcard, playfully told by comic creation Nigel Walmsley. With their own language and bespoke rules, postcards were the texts and emails of their era, at a time when households received up to four postal deliveries a day. Postcards became a holiday staple, but they were once an important means of communicating events - from election results to rail crashes. Entering the world of collectable cards, it's easy to understand the value of a card posted from the Titanic. It's harder to see why anyone would want to collect cards of holiday camps or motorway service stations, but they do. Some consider postcards an art form, others are fascinated by the messages on the back, poignantly stranded in time. Nigel Walmsley is mostly amused.
Lifting the lid on the world of cinema censorship, this programme has unique access to the files of the British Board of Film Classification. Featuring explicit and detailed exchanges between the censor and film-makers, 'Dear Censor' casts a wry eye over some of the most infamous cases in the history of the board.
Time Shift reveals the history of the frozen continent, finding out why the most inhospitable place on the planet has exerted such a powerful hold on the imagination of explorers, scientists, writers and photographers.
Move along the car! Timeshift takes a nostalgic trip on the tram car and explores how it liberated overcrowded cities and launched the age of commuter. The film maps the tram's journey from early horse-drawn carriages on rails, through steam to electric power.
Timeshift reveals the ten commandments of big cinema as it goes behind the scenes of the biggest film genre of them all - the epic. See the biggest sets ever known! Hear the sound of Ancient Rome! Count the spiralling costs as budgets soared! From Ben-Hur to The Ten Commandments, from El Cid to Cleopatra, these were films that set a new standard in BIG. In the days before computers they recreated ancient worlds on a vast scale, and they did it for real. Epic cinema hired armies, defied the seasons and changed cinema. Even the screen wasn't big enough for the epic, so Hollywood made it bigger - and some cinemagoers experienced vertigo watching these vast productions. Today, the epic lives on in the Oscar-laden Gladiator and the spectacular sweep of Avatar. As this documentary reveals, the stories behind the films are as spectacular as the films themselves.
Timeshift reveals the story of the creature that is 'the smoker'. How did this species arrive on our shores? Why did it become so sexy - and so dominant in our lives? Was there really a time when everywhere people could be found shrouded in a thick blue cloud? Enlisting the help of Barry Cryer, Stuart Maconie and others, The Smoking Years tells the unnatural history of a quite remarkable - and now threatened - creature. Warning: smoke-filled nostalgia may damage your health.
Timeshift digs into the archive to discover the unwritten rules that have governed the way we drink in Britain. In the pubs and working men's clubs of the forties and fifties there were strict customs governing who stood where. To be invited to sup at the bar was a rite of passage for many young men, and it took years for women to be accepted into these bastions of masculinity. As the country prospered and foreign travel became widely available, so new drinking habits were introduced as we discovered wine and, even more exotically, cocktails. People began to drink at home as well as at work, where journalists typified a tradition of the liquid lunch. Advertising played its part as lager was first sold as a woman's drink and then the drink of choice for young men with a bit of disposable income. The rules changed and changed again, but they were always there - unwritten and unspoken, yet underwriting our complicated relationship with drinking
