ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the importance of competing discourses in relation to men and masculinities and provides a context for the discussion around the Beatles and masculinity. While Marwick's account of the 1960s argues the social revolution line, one of his key themes is that it was a time of social change for ordinary people and that these were the most radical changes. 'Swinging London' in the mid sixties only involved a couple of hundred celebrities and that real life remained unchanged. MacDonald points out that, while Marwick's cultural revolution of the sixties has to be seen as some sort of reality. The Beatles provide a focus for this book as, arguably, the most famous men of the decade, but the written history of the 1960s is, essentially, a history of men. Marwick's accounts of international revolutionary activities focus on male activists, and his discussion of civil unrest in the US follows the usual JFK, Martin Luther King axis.
