I am sure that in a few weeks’ time some of us will look back on the Olympics and feel a bit sad about being able to say “this was the time of our lives”. However the reality is that for a very large number of people this phrase sums up their personal experience of the event.
I am too young to remember the Festival of Britain but my parent’s generation, having survived the war and started to live fuller and slightly better off lives, often used that experience to highlight how differently they felt about their country and their lives in 1951.
