Espresso coffee bars, the Kray twins, illegal hooch, London night clubs, racketeers, crime capers, escorts, post-war glam waving goodbye to utilitarian austerity.
Rationing was just a shadowy memory by the time the 60s dawned.
And what a decade that was to be! Icons by the dozens; Elvis, the Beetles, Rock n'Roll, Flower Power, The Pill, you name it.
These glittering years offered an abundance of the X Factor, although at the time, Simon Cowell was light years away from his unbelievably successful creation.
I loved this era because I was there, full of ambition, attempting to aspire to something different, to be different, to choose peace instead of war, to take life and not fight or repress it, but make love to it instead.
Young women never hesitated to take there chance of happiness.
they were ready to sell their souls in order to capture that fleeting moment.
Will we think of 2009 with nostalgia in fifty nine years time? I think so.
London events

• 1950 Stone of Destiny stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scots nationalists
• 1951 Festival of Britain
• 1952 London smog kills 4,000 Londoners from respiratory diseases
• 1953 the Coronation
• 1958 Notting Hill riots

London buildings

• 1951 Royal Festival Hall
• 1959 First Sikh temple in Southall

London travel

• 1952 last trams run in London
• 1957 Lewisham Train crash, 92 people die when 2 trains collide in the fog
• 1958 First parking meters appear in Mayfair
• 1958 New world record for a London to New York flight: just under 8 hours
• 1959 M1 motorway opens