London is known around the world as a metropolitan, ordered city full of tourist attractions and exclusive shops, but the real face of the city – disordered, chaotic, sprawling, vigorous, untamed – remains unseen and unexplored.
London from Punk to Blair is a richly illustrated portrait of Europe’s foremost capital. An array of contributors, including poets, journalists, teachers, historians, wanderers, drinkers, photographers and foodies, offer a selection of personal and subjective readings of the city since the late ’70s. Using maps, journeys, pictures, narratives and signs, the contributors chart a variety of literal and metaphorical explorations through modern and postmodern London, showing how it works, and how it fails to work; what makes it vibrant, and what makes it seedy. From West End galleries to strip pubs in Shoreditch; from millionaires’ loft apartments to buses and suburban Tube stops; from film, fashion and gay clubs to punk bands, ruinous factories, pigeon filth and the vagaries of weather, London from Punk to Blair embraces the city like no other book has before.
London is too complex and fragmented for any one person to comprehend fully, but this book goes a long way to help you discover what lies outside, and inside, Zone 1. The book will open your eyes to parts of London that you have never seen, or even knew existed.
Contributors include: Phil Baker, Michael Bracewell, Christopher Breward, John Davis, Tom Dyckhoff, Allen Fisher, Charlie Gere, David Gilbert, Fiona Henderson, Patrick Keiller, Sarah Kent, Roger Luckhurst, Nicholas Royle, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Patrick Wright.
| Introduction | 11 | |
| Ethnicity/Identity | 23 | |
| London and Language | 36 | |
| The Metropolitan Playgournd: London's Children | 41 | |
| Gay London | 48 | |
| Wild Women, Wild Men | 60 | |
| An Unimportant Fire | 63 | |
| Cosmopolis: London's Ethnic Minorities | 67 | |
| White Hair Right Now: Styling the London Man | 73 | |
| The London Suit | 79 | |
| Politics/Economics | 87 | |
| From GLC to GLA: London Politics from Then to Now | 109 | |
| Armagideon Time | 117 | |
| Staging Royal London | 123 | |
| CCTV: City Watch | 131 | |
| Sex, Power and Miracles: A Suburban Triptych | 139 | |
| The Transformation of Political and Cultural Space | 149 | |
| The State of London | 157 | |
| Infrastructure | 163 | |
| Blowdown: The Rise and Fall of London's Tower Blocks | 189 | |
| End of the Line | 199 | |
| Rats with Wings: London's Battle with Animals | 213 | |
| Abandoned Buildings | 221 | |
| Higher and Higher: How London Fell for the Loft | 229 | |
| Down in the Dirt | 237 | |
| Slow Flow: Thirty Years of Transport in London | 243 | |
| Architecture's Urban Shine and Brutal Reality | 257 | |
| Meteomedia; or, Why London's Weather Is in the Middle of Everything | 273 | |
| Culture/Subculture | 279 | |
| Altering Images | 292 | |
| Punk | 301 | |
| Tales from Trash City | 307 | |
| Imaging Brixton | 317 | |
| Secret City: Psychogeography and the End of London | 323 | |
| Occult London | 335 | |
| Groundswell | 341 | |
| London in the Early 1990s | 353 | |
| Imaginary Landscapes, Jumbled Topographies: Cinematic London | 363 | |
| Crime and Memory in the Capital | 371 | |
| References | 377 | |
| Bibliography | 390 | |
| Contributors | 394 | |
| Acknowledgements | 398 | |
| Photographic Acknowledgements | 399 | |
| Index | 400 |
Overview
London is known around the world as a metropolitan, ordered city full of tourist attractions and exclusive shops, but the real face of the city – disordered, chaotic, sprawling, vigorous, untamed – remains unseen and unexplored.
London from Punk to Blair is a richly illustrated portrait of Europe’s foremost capital. An array of contributors, including poets, journalists, teachers, historians, wanderers, drinkers, photographers and foodies, offer a selection of personal and ...