London’s Working-Class Youth and the Making of Post-Victorian Britain, 1958–1971

“An ambitious and skilful marrying of cultural history and cultural geography […], full of local colour and vivid detail.”– Joe Moran, Liverpool John Moores University, UK “This book uniquely brings together the iconic history of ‘swinging London’ and the ‘teenager’ setting them firmly within British society and British identity that continued to be shaped by imperial ideas and ideals - both old and newly reconfigured.” – Jodi Burkett, University of Portsmouth, UK “In this captivating book, Fuhg throws new light on youth culture in Sixties London. Global fashion, transnational popular music, immigration and modernism revitalized the metropolis. And working-class kids, in inner city estates and suburbs, were at the heart of this profound remaking of the capital city and of English society.”– Mark Clapson, University of Westminster, UK This book examines the emergence of modern working-class youth culture through the perspective of an urban history of post-war Britain, with a particular focus on the influence of young people and their culture on Britain’s self-image as a country emerging from the constraints of its post-Victorian, imperial past. Each section of the book – Society, City, Pop, and Space – considers in detail the ways in which working-class youth culture corresponded with a fast-changing metropolitan and urban society in the years following the decline of the British Empire. Was teenage culture rooted in the urban experience and the transformation of working-class neighbourhoods? Did youth subcultures emerge simply as a reaction to Britain's changing racial demographic? To what extent did leisure venues and institutions function as laboratories for a developing British pop culture, which ultimately helped Britain re-establish its prominence on the world stage? These questions and more are answered in this book. Felix Fuhg is Research Associate at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University Berlin, Germany.