I don't ... and I bet you don't really either, only it doesn't do to say.

Take my own particular pond, James went on smoothly, now frankly one of the pleasures of impending retirement is to leave the [civil] Service with a sense of how very much its recruitment has changed since my own youth. We are broader based. I like it.

I don't, thought Laura, and I bet you don't really either, only it doesn't do to say.

P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979), 93

In the early 1950s the African-American sections of America’s inner cities were largely viable, stable communities

Despite the crowded conditions, in the early 1950s the African-American sections of America’s inner cities were largely viable, stable communities; however, the subsequent three decades were quite destabilizing. Federal urban renewal and highway programs required land in inner cities, and African-American neighborhoods were often razed. Low-income African Americans were then relocated into publicly funded housing projects, while middle- and upper-class African Americans were forced to relocate elsewhere. Using a set of policies that both explicitly and implicitly discriminated against African Americans, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) then began to offer subsidized mortgages that enabled millions of Caucasians to purchase homes in the suburbs and flee the cities. Ironically, advances in the civil rights movement later reduced suburban housing discrimination, allowing middle- and upper-class African Americans to relocate to the suburbs as well. As a result of this suburban flight, the remaining inner-city, African-American communities lost leaders, role models, working families, and a solid economic base.

S. Corbett & B. Fikkert, When helping hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the Poor (2014), 85

The generation gap, meanwhile, appeared to be a myth

[In 1969] All social groups, rich and poor, young and old, agreed that there was 'too much publicity given to sex', that 'murderers ought to be hanged' and, by an enormous margin, there were 'too many coloured immigrants in the country now'. The generation gap, meanwhile, appeared to be a myth. In a stunning refutation of the simplistic identification of young people with political progressivism, two-thirds of young people between sixteen and twenty-four agreed that hanging should be brought back, while hostility to coloured immigrants was even stronger among the young than among pensioners.

D. Sandbrook, White Heat (2006), 199

Later (p. 681), Sandbrook observes 74% of the country later agreed with Powell's Rivers of blood speech.

Now her descendant did not know what a napkin ring was

It has come to this. Time was, that life could not proceed appropriately for a family such as my grandmother's without ownership of sauce ladles, knife rests and ivory-handled crumb scoops. Now her descendant did not know what a napkin ring was.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 197

Two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility

Peering back into the 1940s, it is difficult to realize how deeply polarized society was then - even for one who was around at the time and exposed to its stringent rules and assumptions. There is a fair amount of mutual ignorance today between city and country, but it is tempered by two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility. The sight, sound and function of the countryside are familiar to all, if only through the windows of a car or as the backdrop to some news item or rural drama series.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 36

The dream is over. It's just the same, only I'm thirty, and a lot of people have got long hair

I don't know about the "history"; the people who are in control and in power, and the class system and the whole bullshit bourgeoisie is exactly the same, except there is a lot of fag middle class kids with long, long hair walking around London in trendy clothes, and Kenneth Tynan is making a fortune out of the word "fuck." Apart from that, nothing happened. We all dressed up, the same bastards are in control, the same people are runnin' everything. It is exactly the same.

We've grown up a little, all of us, there has been a change and we're all a bit freer and all that, but it's the same game. Shit, they're doing exactly the same thing, selling arms to South Africa, killing blacks on the street, people are living in fucking poverty, with rats crawling over them. It just makes you puke, and I woke up to that too.

The dream is over. It's just the same, only I'm thirty, and a lot of people have got long hair. That's what it is, man, nothing happened except that we grew up, we did our thing – just like they were telling us. You kids – most of the so called "now generation" are getting a job. We're a minority, you know, people like us always were, but maybe we are a slightly larger minority because of maybe something or other.

John Lennon, Interview with J.S. Wenner, Rolling Stone (Feb 4 1971), quoted in D. Sandbrook, Never had it so good (2005), xxiii.