The Kinks’ 1969 album *Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)* was conceived as more than a record: Ray Davies intended it to become a theatrical musical and a television special. The project aimed to explore post-war British life through Arthur Morgan, a suburban man whose family considers emigrating to Australia, reflecting Davies’s scepticism about the supposedly glamorous 1960s.

Davies worked with playwright Julian Mitchell on a television script, with Frank Finlay expected to play Arthur, but the broadcast adaptation collapsed partly because the rest of the band preferred to make a straightforward rock album. The project was also overshadowed by The Who’s *Tommy*, released several months earlier, although Davies maintained that *Arthur* remained an ambitious and distinctive work rather than simply a failed attempt to win the rock-opera race.