THE MOST FAMOUS ARTICLE IN POP MUSIC HISTORY

... and almost confined to the rabbit hutch

T U E S D A Y,  3 0 M A Y

My face is gruesomely red.

Read a jolly good article on pop-music in yesterday's 'Times' – one of the best articles I’ve ever read. William Mann thinks the Beatles’ new LP is marvellous, and that 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' is "beautiful and Bach-derived." But - I'm so MAD: Mummy's taken the paper down to Rabbit so I'll have to go down the moment I wake to save it.

Drew quite a good picture of Dutronc in ski-clothes in my rough book. I just don’t know whether I want to see him again or not. If he comes to visit this summer it's more than likely that he'll treat me as more than just a friend. How I shall react to this I don't know, but it might not be positive. I'd then have to go on writing to him and he could even ask me to stay. On the other hand, there is the possibility I'd like him more and more each time I met him. But somehow I can't see myself falling in love with him. I think I’m too young to fall in love. If I fell in love with someone I'd want to marry them within the next two years, so if, say, I fell in love at 17 I'd want to marry them at 19, which would be mad. It would be lovely though if I did fall in love with him and he fell in love with me.

I'm sure he's awfully nice, despite what Daddy says about him having no deep feelings.

At supper we talked a bit about universities. Daddy says there is supposed to be rather a lot of drug-taking in Cambridge, and girls go to bed with their boyfriends. Does he think it’s immoral, I wonder? I expect he feels it ought to be kept for love.

My hair is CHRONIC at the moment, it's never been so foul. Thank goodness I can put it into bunches.

“The famous discourse by William Mann”

William Mann (1924-1989), senior music critic on The Times, was one of the first establishment figures to "accord to pop records the respectful attention and scholarly language habitually reserved for 'serious' music." Commenting on the legendary Sergeant Pepper album, he observed that “psychedelia can be diagnosed in the hurricane glissandi” of A Day in the Life, “the fanciful lyric and intriguing asymmetrical music” of Lucy in the Sky, and the sound effects of Lovely Rita.

Pop music was being taken seriously, and I was over the moon.