1963: 50 years on
Half a century on, our writers look back at a year that defined the modern world and its impact on civil rights, music, sex and feminism
1963: the beginning of the feminist movement
Kira Cochrane on the year in which Sylvia Plath killed herself – and Betty Friedan's groundbreaking bestseller The Feminine Mystique was published
1963: the defining year of the civil rights movement
Gary Younge on Martin Luther King's famous speech and a time of great hope in the fight against racial inequality
1963: the Profumo scandal lays bare the sex revolution
1963: the Beatles and Bob Dylan revolutionise music
1963: from the Stones to Dr Strangelove, a year of social and cultural upheaval
