English basked in a cozy Indian summer of self-satisfied well-being. Englishmen were the first to conquer Everest (1953)—with the help of an appropriately colonial guide—and to run the mile in under four minutes (in 1954). Moreover it was Britons, the country was frequently reminded, who had split the atom, invented radar, discovered penicillin, designed the turbo-jet engine and more besides. The tone of those years—somewhat over-enthusiastically dubbed a ‘new Elizabethan age’—is well caught in the cinema of the time. The most popular British films of the first half of the Fifties—comedies
...more
