Back to top
53.
TIME Vol. 87, #15 (NY: April 15, 1966) - “London: The Swinging City” issue.
Front cover collage by Geoffrey Dickinson. Contains 13pp. cover feature titled “Great Britain: You Can Walk Across It On the Grass”, including 8pp. of colour photographs (the King’s Road, Foale & Tuffin, Biba’s, miniskirts, Jane Ormsby-Gore with Michael Rainey at Robert Fraser’s gallery, The Scotch of St. James’s [next door to Indica in Mason’s Yard]).
A map of ‘The Scene’ shows the locations of London’s fashionable boutiques, casinos, nightclubs and galleries (though Indica isn’t included), and b/w photos picture Julie Christie, Cathy McGowan, Vidal Sassoon, and Jean Shrimpton with Terence Stamp.
Although the article, long credited with creating the notion of ‘Swinging London’, has largely been attributed solely to Piri Halasz, the basic material for it was assembled by seven correspondents in Time magazine’s London bureau, whose reports Halasz incorporated into her feature, much of which was based on her personal experience of London.
The issue was not universally well-received: as Barry Fantoni observed in his introduction to “Swinging London” (item #138), published in the following year, London had been “swinging for ages, it’s just that Time magazine hadn’t noticed it.” Queen magazine responded by devoting a cover story to “Swingeing London: The Truth”; London Life published a ‘Swinging City’ parody; and Private Eye featured its ‘Swinging England All-Purpose Titillation Supplement’.
Mailing label to front cover, o/w Very Good plus.
