London in Literature 2: 1950s to the Present

London in Literature: 1950s to the Present

Live online course, 10 September to 19 November 2025

This is our second course on London in Literature.

Novels set in London offer a glimpse of London at a certain time, but, more powerfully, they offer an idea of London that has shaped the ways in which the British – and, of course, Londoners and the English – are identified and identify themselves. London’s identity cycles between its history and its literature, as events shape London’s character and the fiction it inspires. And such fiction in turn influences how London, the Londoner, the English person and the British might be conceived. 

Founded as Londinium in 43 CE  by the colonising Romans, London’s citizens have come from all nations and places, particularly during the last 200 years; it is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. London’s culture is deeply rooted in traditional English class and gender codes still visible today. These have been repeatedly challenged and updated by many forces, including migration, two world wars, terrorism and political movements such as the suffragettes. London is dynamic, exciting, complex, sometimes dangerous or tragic, sometimes hopeful. All this goes into the literature of this great city.

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 Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and African communities 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 WWII when women were needed in the workforce, 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.

The texts we will study were published between 1956 and 2023 and explore London from the nineteenth century to the present. They offer an ever-changing notion of London that in turn feeds back into questions of national identity, community, home, and much else. Many of these texts were ground-breaking at the time of publication, offering new insights into the lives of Londoners whose stories were as yet untold.  As we read, we will ask: Who is London? Who might call themselves a Londoner, and what might this mean; how does being a modern Londoner sit with being English, British, cosmopolitan, or something else?

The course includes Linda Grant’s brilliant A Stranger City, which explores Britain’s departure from the European Union – a move which split the country, and was opposed by the majority of Londoners - and casts contemporary London as fractured and uncertain. In this course, we explore how this great city has been written into literature through periods of great change since the 1950s.

Lecture list

1.     Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)

2.     Sam Selvon, Lonely Londoners (1956)

3.     Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)

4.     Sukhdev Sandhu, Night Haunts (2010)

5.     Linda Grant, A Stranger City (2019)

6.     Zadie Smith, The Fraud (2023)

Lecturer: Dr Angela Harris, London

Course fees

£310 Full price
£280 Students and CAMcard holders

Prices include 20% VAT.

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

Set books

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
Sam Selvon, 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)