The Swinging Sixties was a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in the United Kingdom during the mid-to-late 1960s, emphasising modernity and fun-loving hedonism, with Swinging London denoted as its centre. It saw a flourishing in art, music and fashion, and was symbolised by the city's "pop and fashion exports", such as the Beatles, as the multimedia leaders of the British Invasion of musical acts; the mod and psychedelic subcultures; Mary Quant's miniskirt designs; popular fashion models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton; the iconic status of popular shopping areas such as London's King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street; the political activism of the anti-nuclear movement; and the sexual liberation movement.
A scene from Carnaby Street, in London's West End, c. 1966
Carnaby Street, c. 1968
The Mini became an icon of 1960s popular culture, and featured in the 1969 British caper film The Italian Job.
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States with significant influence on the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. UK pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Zombies, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, The Spencer Davis Group, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, the Yardbirds, Them, and Manfred Mann, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones and Donovan, were at the forefront of the "invasion".
The arrival of the Beatles in the US in 1964 marked the start of the British Invasion.
Chart of Billboard Hot 100 number-ones by British artists, by weeks
Fans and media swarm the Beatles at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands in 1964.
Ed Sullivan and the Beatles, February 1964