Philip Larkin, in Annus Mirabilis, tells us that:
“Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(which was rather late for me)/
Between the end of the 'Chatterley; ban/And the Beatles’ first LP.”
Capturing the spirit of the times, the poet goes on to note the recession of sexual shame and the mores that went with it: “Then all at once the quarrel sank/Everyone felt the same,/And every life became/A brilliant breaking of the bank,/A quite unlosable game.”
But elsewhere, a quarrel was hotting up. In 1964, the Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe engaged in a debate about the Church’s historic prohibition of contraception with the famous Thomist Dominican Herbert McCabe in the pages of the journal New Blackfriars.
