Now That’s What I Call a History of the 1980s

Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s is a political and cultural History of Britain in the long 1980s in ten objects or moments. Neither a top down history, nor nostalgic celebration, it reframes the decade around local, national, and global politics of gender, race, age and sexuality.

Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s tells the story of eighties Britain through its popular culture. Charting era-defining moments from Lady Diana's legs and the miner's strike to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage and Adam and the Ants, Lucy Robinson weaves together an alternative history to the one we think we know. This is not a history of big geopolitical disasters, or a nostalgic romp through discos, shoulder pads and yuppie culture. Instead, the book explores a mashing together of different genres and fan bases in order to make sense of our recent past and give new insights into the decade that defined both globalisation and excess.

Packed with archival and cultural research but written with verve and spark, the book offers as much to general readers as to scholars of this period, presenting a distinctive and definitive contemporary history of 1980s Britain, from pop to politics, to cold war cultures, censorship and sexuality.