Growing Up: Sex in the Sixties

''An excellent book'' David Aaronovitch, The Times

Was the 1960s really that great time of liberation, joyful experimentation and celebration of youth? Growing Up takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the sexual revolution.

No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and vilified than the 1960s. For some it was a time when music, fashion and drugs enabled young people to express their individuality and freedom, their hopes and dreams of a different, perhaps better, world. For others, the decade marked the advent of the permissive society, with its undermining of authority, family values and common decency. At the heart of this continuing controversy is sex.

For this wide-ranging and eye-opening survey of the sexual landscape of the 1960s Peter Doggett has assembled a dozen little-known stories that reveal how the sexual revolution transformed people''s lives. Growing Up provides an honest, often disturbing portrait of a constant battle between two forces: the urge to free the body from guilt and restraint; and the desire to control, cannibalise and exploit that liberation for profit or pleasure. It is a battle that divides opinion to this day.