John Davis’s Waterloo Sunrise looks at the evolution of London in the 1960s and 70s. It consists of sixteen connected thematic essays on the city’s evolution, which examine subjects central to urban life, easily obscured or glossed over in a more conventional narrative history. These include topics such as eating out, the sex trade, tourism, even the London taxi driver – as well as housing and deindustrialisation. There are also topographical chapters about the EastEnd and the suburbs. The elusive ‘Swinging London’ phenomenon is treated as transient rather than superficial and is set in the context of a city undergoing a profound social and economic change. The sum of these changes, John argues, made London in the sixties and seventies the precursor of ‘Thatcher’s Britain’.
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