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Bang!: A History Of Britain In The 1980sStock informationGeneral Fields
Special Fields
DescriptionBritain in the 1980s was a polarized nation. With the two main political parties as far apart as at any time since the 1930s, the period was riven by violent confrontation, beginning with the explosion of rioting that rocked England's cities in 1981 and again in 1985; a year-long fight with the National Union of Mineworkers, and then with print workers in Wapping. There was the war to retake the Falkland Islands and the re-escalation of the troubles in Northern Ireland, which began with hunger strikes and peaked with the attempt to assassinate the entire Cabinet in the Brighton bombing. It was also a decade of political innovation - in the life and death of the Social Democratic Party, the mass privatization of state-owned industries, the sale of council houses and the deregulation of financial markets - and cultural ferment, with the rise and fall of indie pop, the emergence of house music, Channel 4 and the growth of alternative comedy; and Prince Charles's interventions on architecture. Author descriptionGraham Stewart was born in 1969 and educated at St Andrews and Cambridge universities. His previous books include Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party; Friendship and Betrayal; His Finest Hours: Winston Churchill's War Speeches and Britannia: 100 Documents that Shaped a Nation. He joined The Times as a leader writer in 2000 and wrote the latest volume of the newspaper's history, The Murdoch Years, in 2005. He currently writes The Times' weekly 'Past Notes' column. |