Book review – “Ready, Steady Go” by Shawn Levy

Levy wrote an excellent book on Jerry Lewis but this account about 60s London isn’t up to that one. The main reason I think is unavoidable – reading about swinging London you can’t help wanting to see the photographs and the movies, hear the music, see the fashions, listen to talking heads. It focuses on some key people – David Bailey, Terence Stamp – but never seems to really dig deep into them – or at least not to the depth of other books on them (eg Stamp’s own writings). Maybe another problem I had with this was that I felt some of the work done by the people profiled here weren’t that important. OK setting style and fashion yeah yeah but at the end of the day Jean Shrimpton was just a model, Stamp only made a few movies as a star, and we're already familiar with the Beatles and the Stones.