Mary Rizza

A sad farewell and thank you to Glen Campbell, whose powerful interpretations of Jimmy Webb’s lyrics have enthralled audiences since he recorded them in the 1960s.

The three songs here, written by Webb and performed so brilliantly by Glen Campbell, are mini-dramas which position emotional anguish in lightly-evoked, unforgettable locations which transcend their geographical identity.

The lyrics take on universal significance, and speak to everyone who has ever experienced love, longing and loneliness.

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The whole dating scene has changed immeasurably since the singers and songwriters of the 1950s and 1960s explored the terrain of teenage love. Our younger selves had to negotiate the pleasures and heartbreaks of relationships and what used to be quaintly known as ‘going out’ or ‘courting’ without the benefits and ease of high-tech communications.

Take the humiliating experience of being ‘stood up’. There you are, at the appointed time, standing outside the cinema or dancehall, or waiting at the corner or the bus stop or railway station or wherever you arranged to meet, and your date doesn’t show.

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The Millstone by Margaret Drabble is a novel published in 1965 about a flat-dwelling girl in her early 20s living and working in London in the decade which swung.

She goes out on dates and has a good social life. She goes to pubs and parties, she hangs out in Soho and West End restaurants, she has a ‘bessie mate’ with whom she has deep and meaningfuls over a bottle of wine. She has sex (once) and she gets pregnant.

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The youngsters in Rumer Godden’s novel The Greengage Summer, set in the 1920s, are blessed with the usual requirements for an interesting fictional childhood — a set of quirky siblings and unconventional absent parents.

Goaded into action by the brattish behaviour of her five children, Mama Grey whisks them away from Belmont Road, Southstone, their dull habitat on the south coast of England, to the Champagne area of France, to visit the battlefields and pay homage to those who died in the Battle of the Marne.

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One of the 339 books referenced in the Gilmore Girls TV series is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s 1968 influential account of druggy trips and the growth of the hippie movement. Jess Mariano — well, who else — is seen reading it. A very Jess choice.

But it’s the other Wolfe whose words have particular resonance as we look forward to revisiting the Gilmores and Stars Hollow in Netflix’s new four-parter, Gilmore Girls, A Year in the Life.

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