Book London in Literature 2: 1950s to the present

In this course, we study six outstanding texts which explore London as it has been lived and remembered since the Second World War. Devastated by the Blitz, London required large-scale reconstruction. Waves of immigration from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Africa and the Caribbean increased from 1% of the population in 1940 to 6% by 1990. London became a melting pot of peoples and cultures, and also of new ideas and great political change. Rights for women, which seemed to bound forward during the Second World War, took a step backwards in the 1950s. Yet with the birth control pill, equal pay rights, sex discrimination legislation and a female prime minister on the horizon, London was set to stage a feminist revolution.

Set books

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)
Sukhdev Sandhu, Night Haunts (2010)
Linda Grant, A Stranger City (2019)
Zadie Smith, The Fraud (2023)

Six sessions, Wednesdays, fortnightly, from 10 September to 19 November 2025, 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm British time.

Click on image below to book.