by Shawn Levy
First published 2003
London in the 1960s becomes the world's coolest city through an explosive mix of pop music, fashion, film, and scandal. Levy follows key figures who created this cultural revolution: actor Terence Stamp, Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, photographer David Bailey, and art dealer Robert Fraser. These emblematic lives intersect with major events like the Profumo scandal and the Great Train Robbery. The city attracts talent from The Beatles to Roman Polanski, from Mary Quant to the Kray twins. Massive talent combines with sheer luck to dominate the global scene. But the party cannot last. After seven years, everyone claims to be a Swinging Londoner, and the same energy spreads to Paris, New York, and San Francisco. Levy shows how London reinvented cool and then lost its swing entirely, contrasting individual stories with the great events that shaped an era.
Genres: history, literary-fiction, 20th-century, non-fiction, biography-memoir, cultural-studies
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: intersecting-lives, rise-and-fall
Setting: London, New York, Paris, San Francisco
Period: 1960s
400 pages · Paperback · Harpercollins Pb