London: from Punk to Blair

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.

Joe Kerr is head of the Department of Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art, London.

Andrew Gibson is professor of modern literature and theory at Royal Holloway, University of London.