Follet did it. He managed to condense essentially 47 years of history and political turmoil into approximately 1000 pages. I enjoyed this one the best out of the entire trilogy. I especially liked how music was employed as a political tool and tied everything together. There was some sensationalism, and some rather ridiculous plot points, but at the same time, they worked within the frame of the novel as 1961-1989 (with the 2008 epilogue)were pretty sensational, and at times, utterly ridiculous in so many ways. 
 I'm also very surprised and slightly disappointed over the lack of Britain other than the music scence of the 1960s. You'd think there would be more on Thatcher in this novel. 
 I'm still trying to adjust my thoughts on this one, but it's definitely a trilogy I wouldn't mind seeing adapated into a miniseries such as his Pillars of the Earth novels were. 
 Edit: Also, Follett still seems to be unable to write sex scenes that don't come across as if they were written by a horny 13-year old boy who writes fanfiction in his spare time. Thankfully, they didn't seem as prominent as they are in some of his other novels, but some of them were still distracting and entertaining for the wrong reasons, as in, I was giggling like a school girl and rolling my eyes at how bad some of them were.