Poet Philip Larkin observed that ‘Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban / And the Beatles’ first LP'. Despite the claims of many literary and cultural critics to the exceptionalism of Ireland's supposed backwardness, particularly its sexual benightedness, and its assumed belated progression into modernity as evidenced in the cultural sphere by the persistence of censorship, it would seem from Larkin's reflections that this was a darkness shared by the entire Western world. On the face of it, this twenty-year period between 1960 and 1980 appears to be one of profound change and rapid transformation in Ireland, as it is elsewhere. If until this point Irish historical development had appeared, even as it was being experienced, as plodding, then in this era, in contrast, events moved swiftly. Living through this moment has been likened to moving from monochrome into multicolour, as if this brave new world now offered everything – especially individual feeling and emotion – at a heightened level. While in broad terms this narrative of a straight trajectory into the future seems unproblematic, the truth is that it is a time of stark incongruities.

In Ireland, this zeitgeist's manifestation can be traced to a handful of major developments in the early 1960s particularly.