ABSTRACT
A properly comprehensive list of writing on modern London published in the twenty years since the launch of the London Journal might surpass the two thousand entries in the bibliography compiled by Philippa Dolphin, Eric Grant and Edward Lewis in 1981. The launch of the London Journal in 1975 coincided with an important moment of transition in the history of modern London. Initial results of the 1971 Census were confirming trends of population decline already apparent from the 1966 Census. The combination of manufacturing loss with selective population out migration was at long last shifting perceptions of London’s problems away from the conventional postwar concern with ‘congestion’. While high-value industry shifted out to the science parks and the glittering sheds of Bracknell and Basingstoke, a revolution was occurring in the service economy of central London, and particularly the Square Mile. Unlike its global competitors, London spent the past decade of economic turbulence dismantling and rebuilding its institutional superstructure.
