This Happy Breeding

Besides the fact that there will always be one, cliches about England are almost infinite in variety. It rains all the time; the cooking is miserable— nothing but mutton, tea, suety puddings—and, good lord, the beer is served warm. Then there is the stereotype British male: a stoical, pipe-puffing, baggy-tweeds type who eschews sex for a rousing game of darts in the local pub, and when he does indulge is awkward and passionless. British women are, for lack of practice, frigid. None of these things has ever been very true. But nowadays, as far as sex is concerned anyway, Britons are shattering the world's illusions about their propensities and prowess. In the bargain, they are shocking themselves.

"Are Virgins Obsolete?" On the island where the subject has long been taboo in polite society, sex has exploded on the national consciousness and into national headlines. "Are We Going Sex Crazy?" asks the London Daily Herald. "Is Chastity Outmoded?" asks a school magazine for teenagers. "Are Virgins Obsolete?" is the question posed by the sober New Statesman. The answers vary, but one thing is clear: Britain is being bombarded with a barrage of frankness about sex and flooded with a public questioning of the long-established Victorian moral standards. Wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent Sunday Times article, "Today there is in our society an immense outbreak of preoccupation with Venus. There is a dwelling upon sex: the sex problem, the adjustments of sex, instruction for sex, adventures of sex, stories of sex, what to do with sex, brighter and better sex." And the candor with which the once forbidden subject is being explored is positively astonishing.

It is the decorous British Broadcasting Corp. that leads the discussion these days. BBC programs have included a lecture on the arguments for premarital intercourse, a discussion of homosexuality (known on the Continent as le vice anglais), a drama about an abortionist, and another play about men reminiscing about their past sex life ("Her breasts could fill champagne glasses"). On the popular satirical show That Was the Week That Was, the young Establishment types poke a kind of sexual fun that would make America's FCC Boss Newton Minow turn pale. Taking off on a government report that one baby in every eight born in London is illegitimate, TWTWTW's brassy singer Millicent Martin lamented as she rocked a cradle:

Don't you weep, my little baby 'Cause you haven't got a dad.

Go to sleep, my little baby, Things aren't really quite so bad.

There's no reason any longer Why you ought to feel so blue.

The world is full of bastards Just like you.