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THE Sixties – just looking at the newspaper headlines brings back the big stories. Kennedy Assassinated – A Sniper’s Bullet, Kennedy Says No Deal Over Cuba, Tortured Vietnam, The Pill: What Catholics Say, Close Up Of the Man on The Moon, 12 to Read Lady Chatterley: Judge says ‘Don’t Take It Home’. The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic Purple Haze blew us all away, the satirical show That Was The Week That Was attacked the government and was taken off the air before the 1964 general election, and we all went shoeless and knickerless to see in our kaftanned, flower-bedecked thousands that great, flowerpower rock musical Hair.

This is the sixth in Robert Opie’s series of Scrapbooks, now widely used in schools, produced in his unique pictorial style and with 1400 images of fashions, everyday products, the music, films and tv that shaped the decade.

We are drawn back into a world of Puffa-Puffa Rice, Mary Poppins sugar, the Twist, Radio Caroline, Carnaby Street, Mary Quant, Biba, World Cup Willie, the mini skirt and the Mini-Minor, Honey magazine – “When to Neck and When Not” and a time when smoking was cool and when 20 Tipped Woodbines were 2/8d./14p.

Robert Opie began his collection as a teenager in 1963 and it now numbers some 500,000 items, which tell the remarkable story of our consumer society, our lifestyle and culture. Much of this astonishing collection is housed in Gloucester Docks’ Museum of Advertising and Packaging, which is sadly closing in October and there is currently uncertainty about the collection’s future. The Antiques Trade Gazette spoke to Mr Opie and there is a hope that the collection may re-emerge within the docks, but much cash is needed. Mr Opie’s collection is not so much a museum as a valuable resource. The Swinging Sixties exhibition opens on April 12 and runs until October 31, and Mr Opie wants as many people as possible to come to the museum before it closes to recognise that this important collection contains the stuff of all our lives; it is our history and must continue. Yes? Write to Robert Opie at the Gloucester Museum of Advertising & Packaging, Gloucester Docks, Gloucester GL1 2EH or ring him on 01452 302309.

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