1966-69 as the age of 'Anglo-Whimsy' in music

My attention was drawn today to an article in The New European newspaper, October 31-November 6, 2019, that does not seem to have made its way to The New European newspaper's website yet but has flagged up several articles by author SOPHIA DEBOICK
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home/search?submitted=true&searchSlot=true&q=deboick&submit=true

Anyhow, for now I shall transcribe the print article's intro blurb and opening paragraphs:

EUROFILE: THE AGE OF ANGLO-WHIMSY

SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back at a brief period in musical history when English eccentricity and experimentalism combined to spectacular effect

Between 1966 and 1969, English pop was populated by some peculiar figures: gnomes, spacement, Edwardian bandleaders and washing line thieves among them. The British invasion had shifted the centre of gravity and by 1966 London was the place to be and Englishness became both a theme and a fashion.

English singers suddenly sounded like where they came from and facets of the British life appeared in their lyrics. But in these years, there was a run of records by the most important acts of the era -- from the Beatles to the Kings -- that displayed a very specific set of characteristics: English-accented, strongly narrative pop songs, featuring music hall-style character sketches, quirky vignettes, nursery rhyme atmospheres, idiosyncratic instrumentation, Edwardiana, quotidian detail, suburbia, the surreal, the sinister, and a definite feyness.

This was a cultural moment that might by called 'Anglo-whimsy' (rock historian Clinton Heylin applied the term to Pink Floyd's seminal Arnold Layne single in particular). Occurring as the Beat breakthrough and Mod aesthetic segued into the era of acid, psychedelia and Eastern religion, this was a fleeting moment, but it produced some of the most experimental records of the modern pop era.

More of this in The New European, October 31-November 6, 2019 print edition, pp 31-34.