This collection of essays highlights the variety of 1970s culture, and shows how it responded to the transformations that were taking place in that most elusive of decades. The 1970s was a period of extraordinary change on the social, sexual and political fronts. Moreover, the culture of the period was revolutionary in a number of ways; it was sometimes florid, innovatory, risk-taking and occasionally awkward and inconsistent. The essays collected here reflect this diversity and analyse many cultural forms of the 1970s. The book includes articles on literature, politics, drama, architecture, film, television, youth cultures, interior design, journalism, and contercultural “happenings”. Its coverage ranges across phenomena as diverse as the Wombles and Woman’s Own. The volume offers an interdisciplinary account of a fascinating period in British cultural history. This book makes an important intervention in the field of 1970s history. It is edited and introduced by Laurel Forster and Sue Harper, both experienced writers, and the book comprises work by both established and emerging scholars. Overall it makes an exciting interpretation of a momentous and colourful period in recent culture.

'A masterful work of social history and cultural commentary, told with much wit. It almost makes you feel as if you were there' ROGER LEWIS, Mail on Sunday The 1970s. They were the best of times and the worst of times. Wealth inequality was at a record low, yet industrial strife was at a record high. These were the glory years of Doctor Who and glam rock, but the darkest days of the Northern Ireland conflict. Beset by strikes, inflation, power cuts and the rise of the far right, the cosy Britain of the post-war consensus was unravelling – in spectacularly lurid style. Fusing high politics and low culture, Crisis? What Crisis? presents a world in which Enoch Powell, Ted Heath and Tony Benn jostle for space with David Bowie, Hilda Ogden and Margo Leadbetter, and reveals why a country exhausted by decline eventually turned to Margaret Thatcher for salvation.

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are commonly characterised as an age of ‘neoliberalism’ in which individualism, competition, free markets and privatisation came to dominate Britain’s politics, economy and society. This historical framing has proven highly controversial, within both academia and contemporary political and public debate. Standard accounts of neoliberalism generally focus on the influence of political ideas in reshaping British politics; according to this narrative, neoliberalism was a right-wing ideology, peddled by political economists, think-tanks and politicians from the 1930s onwards, which finally triumphed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Neoliberal Age? suggests this narrative is too simplistic. Where the standard story sees neoliberalism as right-wing, this book points to some left-wing origins, too; where the standard story emphasises the agency of think-tanks and politicians, this book shows that other actors from the business world were also highly significant. Where the standard story can suggest that neoliberalism transformed subjectivities and social lives, this book illuminates other forces which helped make Britain more individualistic in the late twentieth century. The analysis thus takes neoliberalism seriously but also shows that it cannot be the only explanatory framework for understanding contemporary Britain. The book showcases cutting-edge research, making it useful to researchers and students, as well as to those interested in understanding the forces that have shaped our recent past.

A history of British cultural Marxism. This book traces its development from beginnings in postwar Britain, through transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, up to the advent of Thatcherism, to reflect a tradition, that represents an effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left.

In the early 1970s, Britain seemed to be tottering on the brink of the abyss. Under Edward Heath, the optimism of the Sixties had become a distant memory. This book recreates the gaudy, schizophrenic atmosphere of the early Seventies: the world of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, David Bowie and Brian Clough, Germaine Greer and Mary Whitehouse.

This book follows the afterlives of empire from 1945 to present day, providing an interdisciplinary analysis of how the legacy of empire continues to shape the cultures, politics, spaces and memories of contemporary Britain. The essays it contains illustrate this with reference to a series of local histories, individual texts and institutions.

Black British Culture and Society brings together in one indispensable volume key writings on the Black community in Britain, from the 'Windrush' immigrations of the late 1940s and 1950s to contemporary multicultural Britain. Combining classic writings on Black British life with new, specially commissioned articles, Black British Culture and Society records the history of the post-war African and Caribbean diaspora, tracing the transformations of Black culture in British society. Black British Culture and Society explores key facets of the Black experience, charting Black Britons' struggles to carve out their own identity and place in an often hostile society. The articles reflect the rich diversity of the Black British experience, addressing economic and social issues such as health, religion, education, feminism, old age, community and race relations, as well as Black culture and the arts, with discussions of performance, carnival, sport, style, literature, theatre, art and film-making. The contributors examine the often tense relationship between successful Black public figures and the media, and address the role of the Black intellectual in public life. Featuring interviews with noted Black artists and writers such as Aubrey Williams, Mustapha Matura and Caryl Phillips, and including articles from key contemporary thinkers, such as Stuart Hall, A. Sivanandan, Paul Gilroy and Henry Louis Gates, Black British Culture and Society provides a rich resource of analysis, critique and comment on the Black community's distinctive contribution to cultural life in Britain today.