In May 2024, History Professor Stephen Brooke published his new book London, 1984: Conflict and Change in the Radical City which was recently celebrated by The Conversation as one of the top 5 best non-fiction books of 2024 according to their experts. Recommended by Keiran Connell, a senior lecturer in contemporary British history at Queen’s University in Belfast, The Conversation calls the book “a powerful study of a city – and a country – at a political crossroads.”
Published by Oxford University Press, London, 1984 provided a revealing new view of London in the 1980s, exploring a conflicted city divided by radical politics and the conservative government. This period was filled with turmoil including racial violence, poverty and policing, as well as significant struggles for gay and lesbian rights, the economy, neoliberalism and other global issues of the time.
London, 1984 was selected alongside 4 other top non-fiction books including Melting Pot by Rachel Cockerell, Less by Patrick Grant, Cursed by Charlie Engman and The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole.
Stephen Brooke is a Professor of History in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University. He is a historian of twentieth-century Britain, with a speciality in politics, gender, sexuality and culture. He is also the author of Sexual Politics: Sexuality, Family Planning and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day (Oxford, 2012), as well as articles on the photographer Roger Mayne, on Britain in the 1980s and on themes of love and romance in popular music and film in the twentieth century.
