When the record shops opened for business on 2 January in the deep fog that greeted the new year in London, ‘Rock Around the Clock’, by the American rock ’n’ roller Bill Haley and his Comets, had elbowed aside local boy Dickie Valentine’s ‘Christmas Alphabet’ to reoccupy the number-one slot it had claimed briefly in the dying weeks of 1955.
Rock ’n’ roll was rough, raucous and dangerous, a strange and alien American sound that made some of the older, stuffier musicians and commentators look very foolish, very fast. ‘I don’t think the rock ’n’ roll craze will come to Britain. It is primarily for the coloured population. I can’t see it ever becoming a real craze,’ said bandleader Ted Heath early in 1956.
Its arrival on the same day as Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden’s New Year message seems to mock the 58-year-old statesman’s studied steady-as-she-goes calm.
Sir Anthony told cinema audiences on Pathé News:
This is the season when we, each one of us, try to prepare our resolutions for the new year. We’re determined to keep full employment – we’re all agreed about that. We’re also determined to maintain our high standard of living. But if we are to do these things, we have got to sell more abroad … And then there’s the question of peace – always, in all our minds. You can be sure we shall do everything we can to reduce tension between the nations at any time and at every opportunity. And we shall stand stoutly and firmly with our friends.
By the end of the year, the Prime Minister’s remark about peace looked even more out of touch than the bandleader’s one about rock ’n’ roll.
One of the most characteristic attitudes of the ’50s was deference, and, at Sandringham on New Year’s Day, you got a vivid sense of its grip upon the nation.The Queen magazine told its readers:
A crowd of about 5,000 saw Her Majesty the Queen and other members of the Royal Family leave the parish church after Morning Service. Later, Valerie Simpson, who lives on the Royal Estate at Anmer, went to Sandringham to receive from the Queen the bible that Her Majesty presents each year to the pupil of Dersingham Secondary School considered most proficient in religious knowledge.
Every year, teacher Richard Hackford selected a pupil and passed his or her details to Sandringham House so that the Queen could be briefed. The headmaster accompanied Valerie Simpson and her parents to morning service at Sandringham Church, and later presented Valerie to Her Majesty. He then met the eager press – including, no doubt, the correspondent ofThe Queen – outside a side entrance to Sandringham House to tell them all about his star pupil, before Valerie emerged to be photographed with the signed presentation Bible.
The magazine followed this with many pages of court news – charity balls, hunt balls, the Duke of Edinburgh leading the guns on a pheasant shoot – and a comment piece saying that, while the future was hard to
