Events
What better location than Brighton Pier for an evening exploring Britain’s first youth counterculture with guests Travis Elborough and Max Décharné?
This special event will begin at 7pm with a complimentary screening of We Are the Lambeth Boys, Karel Reisz’s 1959 depiction of South London teens aimed to challenge the media perception of ‘Teddy Boys’. (49mins/BFI).
From 8pm there will be illustrated talks from Max and Travis, ending with the pair in conversation and an audience Q&A.
Max Décharné: Teddy Boys
Musician and author Max Décharné tells the story of Britain’s first youth counterculture. With their draped suits, suede creepers and immaculately greased hair, the Teds defined a new era for a generation of teenagers raised on a diet of drab clothes, Blitz playgrounds and tinned dinners.
Travis Elborough: Mods and Rockers
It’s over 60 years since fighting broke out on Britain’s beaches between those rival style tribes the mods and rockers, an event that Travis Elborough chronicles in his acclaimed book Wish You Were Here: England on Sea. He will explore the emergence of these contrasting youth cults, one razor sharp smart, the other leather-clad and hairy, and examines just what got them fighting on the beaches just two decades after the war.
Afterwards, in conversation, Max Décharné and Travis Elborough will discuss the shockwaves these youth tribes caused in their eras and what legacy remains of these grassroots working class fashions and the music that set them dancing.
Max Décharné has written about music regularly for Mojo magazine since 1998, prior to which he wrote extensively about film for Neon. Décharné is probably one of the only people currently writing about music to have played on BBCTV’s Later… with Jools Holland show, at Madison Square Garden and at the Hollywood Bowl.
Travis Elborough is the Shoreham-born author of many books, including Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles and Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020. He is described by the Guardian as ‘one of the country’s finest pop culture historians’.
Dress code: DA, drainpipes, drape coat, brothel-creepers, slim-jim tie, flick-knife/comb.