Why Britain Rocked: How Rock Became Roll and Took Over the World challenges the origins of ‘Beatlemania’ by travelling deep into Britain’s history to trace the events that led to Britain’s twentieth century musical explosion. With rigorous in-depth research, new discoveries and original insights Why Britain Rocked: How Rock Became Roll and Took Over the World completely reframes the history of British pop music and argues that The Beatles’ arrival that so surprised the world really shouldn’t have been a surprise at all.

The story goes that by copying blues and rock and roll Britain suddenly started making spectacularly great music out of nowhere, like some clever, quick-learning cultural satellite of America. But Britain’s music revolution didn’t happen from a standing start. Far from it. For something so dazzling and multifaceted the reasons for its sudden appearance lie deeper than those legendary deliveries of blues records into Liverpool’s port and the legacy of music hall. From the Celts and the Quakers, to Ira Aldridge, Paul Robeson and the enduring power of British balladry, Why Britain Rocked: How Rock Became Roll and Took Over the World breaks out of pop history’s twentieth century confines and uncovers events that encouraged it to be, in all its glorious, crazy, luminous, joyous, profound, melancholic, ferocious, anarchic, witty, smart and wonderful ways.