The story goes that under the influence of blues and rock and roll, Britain suddenly started making spectacularly great music in the 1960s like some clever, quick learning cultural satellite of America. But Britain’s mid twentieth-century pop music explosion didn’t happen from a standing start. The reasons something so dazzling and multifaceted appeared lie deeper than those legendary deliveries of blues records to Liverpool’s port and the legacy of music halls. Featuring new discoveries and original insights, Why Britain Rocked: How Rock became Roll and Took over the World argues the Beatles’ arrival, which stunned the world, really shouldn’t have been surprising at all.

From the Celts, Henry VIII, and the Quakers to Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson, Why Britain Rocked uncovers the unique events and unexpected influences that encouraged British pop to be, in all its glorious, crazy, luminous, joyous, profound, melancholic, ferocious, anarchic, witty, smart and wonderful ways.