A Journey Through Ruins

• A unique evocation of Britain at the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule - and of the death of the 'post-war settlement'
• Views the transformation of the country through the unexpected prism of everyday life in East London
• Includes a new introduction revisiting the book's East End starting point in the 21st century and four additional chapters

New to this edition

• Includes a new introduction revisiting the book's East End starting-point in Dalston Lane, four additional chapters, and an insert of photographs taken in and around Dalston in the year of the book's first appearance

Readership: All those interested in the contemporary history of London, Britain in the 1980s, the impact of Thatcherism, and the heritage industry in British culture

"The chapter on the national trust is among the best and most original writing...I've ever read." - Vera Rule, The Guardian

Going Back to Dalston: Preface to the Oxford Edition
Part One: The Undemolished World of Dalston Lane
1: Street-Corner Vision
2: Around the World in Three Hundred Yards
3: All Cats are Grey by Night
4: Down in the Dirt
5: Dalston Lane Becomes a Downland Track
Part Two: Brideshead and the Tower Blocks
6: Brideshead Relocated
7: Abysmal Heights
8: Rodinsky's Place
9: An Unexpected Reprieve
Part Three: Scenes from the Privatized City
10: The London Bus Queue Falls Apart
11: The Vandalized Telephone Box
12: The Man with a Metal Detector
13: Drinking Water in a Toxic State
Part Four: Tales of Conversion
14: The Park that Lost its Name
15: Remembering London's War
16: The Bow Quarter: Six Hundred and Seventy Luxury Flats in an Old Victorian Hell-House
Part Five: Visions of the New Dawn
17: Excellence: From Fifth Avenue to Hackney Town Hall
18: Refounding the City with Prince Charles
Afterwards...
19: Down Among the Gentrifiers
20: A Night to Remember
21: Brick Lane's Day of Killing
22: Don Giovanni (and Business Planning) Come to the Hackney Empire
23: Siraj Izhar's public lavatory
Notes
Index