Professor Stephen Brooke’s (Department of History) book London, 1984: Conflict and Change in the Radical City has been selected by The Conversation as one of its top 5 best non-fiction books of 2024.
London, 1984 explores a pivotal year in London’s history, when the reforms enacted by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government began to profoundly reshape the life of the city and its inhabitants. In that year, London became a symbol of a wider political change in late twentieth century Britain between the social democratic era that had defined the post-1945 period to a neoliberal one that has dominated to the present day. To understand the impact of that change, the book looks at a wide spectrum of London life over that year, including subjects such as policing, racial violence, gay and lesbian rights, feminism, and economic equality, and moves through a variety of sites and moments, from a childcare in East London, to a raid on a bookshop, to an anti-apartheid demonstration in Trafalgar Square, and to the corridors of power in Westminster.
Professor Brooke’s work is noted by The Conversation UK as a “powerful study of a city – and a country – at a political crossroads” and it is a chronicle of how one of the world’s most important cities changed, both politically and socially, in the late 20th century. Research for the book was supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant.