Twenties London: A City in the Jazz Age

This highly illustrated survey of the twentieth century's most exciting decade examines the art, design, fashion and architecture of 1920s' London alongside wider social and political ideas about Britain, modernism, mass democracy and popular culture. The book provides a framework for understanding the cultural maelstrom of the decade.

London was at the heart of all the 1920s' debates about Britain?s future. What was the London of the future to be in a world shaken by catastrophic wars, revolutions and scientific miracles? Was the British capital to be a Babylon of unrestrained capitalism, American-style; a mechanistic machine for living, Soviet-style; or a global Imperial capital? London was the place where all these alternative visions jostled for space with traditional ideas about Englishness and Britishness.

The book discusses these debates in terms of how they were made physical through London?s streets and buildings, the clothes, material goods and creative works produced, worn and used by Londoners. It shows London emerging from the decade as a city for the modern world, British-style, newly-democratized, a unique mix of international modernism and distinctly post-modern diversity, irony and pragmatism.

Cathy Ross is head of the Department of Modern History at the Museum of London and has written exclusively on aspects of the social and artistic history of London.