Songs of Seven Dials : An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London

Houlbrook, Matt

Manchester University Press（2025/10発売）

Manchester University Press（2025/10発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 312 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781526181954
• DDC分類 942.132

Full Description

The untold story of a remarkable neighbourhood and the battle to define modern London.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Seven Dials was one of London's most diverse neighbourhoods, home to migrant and working-class communities, bohemian clubs and cafes. But business leaders and city planners had other ideas.

Beginning with a rancorous libel trial of 1927, in which a Sierra Leonean café owner and his wife confronted the racist newspaper that destroyed their business, Matt Houlbrook reveals the surprising history of this remarkable neighbourhood. He traces how tensions that simmered on the streets and finally exploded in court betrayed the politics of urban 'improvement' and the 'colour bar'. Underlying the trial was a series of troubling questions that would define Britain in the twentieth century - about race, class and the boundaries of belonging, gentrification and the kind of city London would become.

Imaginative, powerful and deeply moving, Songs of Seven Dials is an important new history of London in the 1920s and 1930s.

Contents

Introduction: songs of Seven Dials
1 From Sierra Leone to Seven Dials: Great White Lion Street
2 Monstrous machines: Great St Andrew Street
3 The local politics of improvement: Shorts Gardens
4 Libel, law and politics: Long Acre and the Strand
5 Slumming in bohemia: Great Earl Street
6 The ghosts of modern London: Little White Lion Street
7 Names and histories: Little St Andrew and Little Earl Streets
Denoument: full circle: Mercer Street
Index