This important and intriguing book, which uses a wide range of varied and rich sources, is a multi-faceted study of London in the 1960s and 1970s, through Margaret Thatcher becoming prime minister in 1979. It is not a traditional study nor a narrative of London’s history for those years. Rather it is a series of sixteen discrete chapters, each dealing with important aspects of London life, but deliberately not integrated with one another (although there are some connections between them, particularly over housing issues). The first chapter, “Why London? Why Now? The Swinging Moment,” introduces the study, and the last, “Becoming Postindustrial,” has some concluding remarks that place an emphasis on the decline of the docks as a major indication and cause of London no longer being as active as an industrial center.
Davis doesn’t explain his interesting title, Waterloo Sunrise. Presumably it is designed to suggest a parallel...