Rene Cutforth leads us through the 50s with the same acumen and humour that he applied to his-three earlier programmes - the 20s, 30s and 40s. With a journalist's eye he selects key material-Everest, The Coronation, Teddy Boys , The Festival of Britain, Rock and Roll, The Angry Young Men. To this he adds his own very personal assessment of the Korean War, Burgess and Maclean, and the Suez crisis.
' The 50s,' says Cutforth, ' was the watershed decade of the century. At the beginning we saw ourselves much as we have always done. At the end we were an affluent and permissive society, well on our way to Swinging London and the radical rejection of our old established image in the world.'
Film cameraman ALEC CURTIS Film editor ROBIN SALES Executive producer BILL MORTON Produced by MARCARET MCCALL