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Political historian Peter Hennessy reads from his new study of Britain in the early 1960s.

Top of the Pops was one of a number of TV shows created to showcase the tsunami of new, exciting pop and rock music sweeping across the western world. And when heart throb Cliff Richard sang about going on a Summer Holiday as he drove his double-decker bus to France in the hit film of 1963, he was echoing another social phenomenon of the swinging sixties, the package holiday to Europe.

But if the costas were swarming with Brits abroad, traditional English resorts like Margate, Clacton and Brighton found themselves overrun by rival marauding mobs of young biker thugs, the Mods and the Rockers, whose punch-ups tarnished the annual bucket-and-spade outings for many Brits who decided to holiday at home.

Written and Read by Peter Hennessy
Adapted for radio by Libby Spurrier
Produced by Simon Elmes

A Pier production for ±«Óãtv Radio 4