Abstract
European models may indeed have impressed themselves deeply into the British imagination; but the USA loomed just as large as the very acme of a plentiful future.1 Visiting Europeans gazed in wonder at the vitality, colour and above all sheer abundance of American life — expressed in the variety and colour of their cars, for example.2 Even Ministry of Works domestic kitchens were sold to the public for their ‘American’ dynamism, despite their design roots in Frankfurt School modernism.3 These were also years of great hope for what clear-eyed, informed, determined and muscular liberalism could achieve in the pursuit of one overriding aim: economic growth. President Kennedy was much admired in Britain, and his young team of technocratic advisers appeared deeply impressive to a nation less than enamoured of its ever-wearier Conservative leaders.4 Not everyone was impressed, to be sure.5 Young people in Britain adapted American rock music and jukeboxes to their own tastes.6 Britons remained relatively immune to Americans’ passion for huge and inefficient cars, on the grounds of their own relatively austere tastes as well as how much they cost to run. Many Americans came to agree with them during their late 1950s recession.7
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Notes
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© 2012 Glen O’Hara
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O’Hara, G. (2012). President Kennedy, Prime Minister Macmillan and the Gold Market, 1960–63. In: Governing Post-War Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230361270_4
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