The 1950s: life in Britain, for the last decade, had been austere and unsmiling. And in the post-war world, little had changed. In England, government debts had the country on the verge of economic ruin. Furthermore, London, Liverpool, Birmingham – and all of the seaport villages – lay in scalded ruin. Children skittered about, slapdash, on heaps of rubble, and the once pastoral countryside was littered with abandoned military bases and equipment, quietly disappearing in a riot of weeds. Beatles expert and author Mark Lewisohn offers this vivid 1956 description of Liverpool as viewed by author J. Brophy in his period piece, City of Departures: “Once progressive and proud, the city is now dilapidated and dirty, shabby and down and out … still [replete with] unrepaired bombsites, many transformed into eternal temporary car parks, red brick buildings now black with encrusted soot, ruined shops run amok with police-dodging barrow boys, people queuing for almost everything.”