1962. a year to remember. by dinah parums

1962. A Year To Remember. By Dinah Parums.

In 1962, I was four years old, living in Derbyshire, England and attending nursery school. My mum worked as a midwife in Chesterfield and my dad was an electrical engineer. I had two older brothers and an elder sister. 1962 was the first year I remember.

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CHILDHOOD •  ‘Sherbet Dib-Dabs’ become a

‘prestige’ item at school; •  Golden Wonder produce flavoured

crisps but retain plain ones with the little blue pack of optional salt.

TRANSPORT •  Getting used to ‘Panda crossings’

for the first time on the walk home from school;

•  Not impressed by the launch of the Ford Cortina (mum had a Morris Minor);

•  Motorways are built to include the M5 and M6.



‘POP’ MUSIC •  The Beatles playing their first sessions at Abbey

Road Studios, unaware that John Lennon had secretly married Cynthia Powell;

•  ‘Love Me Do’ is released on Parlophone; •  The Rolling Stones first performance at the

Marquis Club in London as the supporting act to Long John Baldry;

•  Joe Meek’s ‘Telstar’ performed by The Tornados, is at No.1 for ages;

•  So too is Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger on the Shore’; •  As is Cliff Richard’s ‘The Young Ones’ & ‘Do

You Want to Dance’; •  Ray Charles’ ‘You Don’t Know Me’; •  Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’; •  The 7th Eurovision song contest was held in

Luxembourg and won by France’s Isabelle Aubret with ‘Un Premier Amour’ (U.K. entry was Ronnie Carroll singing ‘Ring-A-Ding Girl’).



TELEVISION •  The first transatlantic television transmissions

via the satellite, Telstar; •  Learning to whistle to the tune from BBC’s

new drama, ‘Z Cars’; •  Watching the first episode of ‘University

Challenge’ and ‘That Was The Week That Was’ on TV;

•  The ‘Tonight Show’ begins in the U.S. hosted by Johnny Carson;

•  Watching Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev first dance together in ‘Giselle’ at the Royal Ballet;

•  ‘Animal Magic’ with Johnny Morris is my favourite TV programme;

•  ‘Top of the Form’ and ‘Steptoe and Son’ and ‘Dr Finlay’s Casebook’ all start in this year;

•  Norman Vaughan hosts ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’.



THE NEWS •  Reading the big print in the first colour supplement

to be issued - by ‘The Sunday Times’; •  Deciding not to go to London for the day with mum

due to the severe smog in London, which caused many deaths;

•  Sir Laurence Olivier becomes first Director of the National Theatre with Kenneth Tynan as Literary Manager;

•  An agreement is signed between England and France to develop Concorde;

•  Britain agrees to buy the Polaris missile system from the United States;

•  Listening to speeches on the radio from Prime Minister Harold Macmillan;

•  Deaths of Vita Sackville-West; the actor Charles Laughton; on 5th August of Marilyn Monroe and on 7th November former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt dies aged 78;

•  Tanganyika (modern day Tanzania) becomes a republic within the Commonwealth, with Julius Nyerere as its president;

•  The Cuban missile crisis begins in October and ends in November, but is a constant topic on TV.



SPORT •  Cambridge University won the Boat Race by

5 lengths, watched by Princess Margaret; •  At Wimbledon, Rod Laver beats Martin

Mulligan in the men’s final & Karen Susman beats Vera Sukova;

•  Sony Liston is boxing World Heavyweight Champion;

•  Brazil win the football World Cup; •  The British Open golf tournament is won by

Arnold Palmer; •  The Grand National is won by Kilmore; •  Tottenham Hotspur retain the FA cup,

captained by Danny Blanchflower; •  The 1962 Formula One Champion is Graham

Hill, driving Ferrari.



LITERATURE •  Eric Hobsbawm publishes ‘The

Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848’;

•  Doris Lessing publishes ‘The Golden Notebook’ (but I wait 20 years to read that);

•  Len Deighton publishes his book, ‘The IPCRESS file’.



CINEMA •  The first James Bond film, ‘Dr No’

released starring the relatively unknown, Sean Connery;

•  Mum and dad go to the Gaumont Cinema to watch the release of David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’;

•  ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ features Angela Lansbury as a villain;

•  The 35th Academy Awards, hosted by Frank Sinatra, with wins for ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (best film), Gregory Peck in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’(best actor), Anne Bancroft ‘The Miracle Worker’ (best actress) and David Lean (best director).



SCIENCE •  Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkinson and

James D. Watson win the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their “discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”.

•  British biochemists Max Perutz and John Cowdery Kendrew win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in “investigating the structure of haem-

containing proteins”.



DECEMBER 1962 •  Getting a white rabbit (‘Snowy’) for

Christmas (mum has a hard time containing it in a cardboard box under the stairs until Christmas Eve);

•  Learning that the Royal Family are German and also have their family celebrations on Christmas Eve (I tell Snowy);

•  The year ends with heavy snow and a big freeze which does not end until March, 1963.


1962. a year to remember. by dinah parums

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