Growing up and going out
Youth culture, commerce, and leisure space in post-war Britain
By Sarah Kenny
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Click Here to Buy from Your Preferred BooksellerBook Information
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 264
- Price: £85.00
- Published Date: February 2025
- Series: Studies in Popular Culture
Description
In the decades following the Second World War, youthful sociability was remade as young people across Britain flocked to newly-opened coffee bars, beat clubs, and discos. These spaces, increasingly unknown and unfamiliar to the adults who passed by them, played a remarkable role in reshaping town and city centres after dark as sites of leisure and recreation. Telling the history of youth in post-war Britain from the ground up, through the towns and cities that young people moved through, this book traces how the new spaces of post-war youth leisure transformed both young people's relationship with their local environment and adults' perceptions of the possibilities and dangers of modern leisure. Growing up and going out offers a timely study of youth, commerce, and leisure that explores the reimagination, remaking, and regulation of the post-war city after dark.
Contents
Introduction
PART I: YOUTH AND THE CHANGING URBAN ENVIRONMENT
1 Out in the city
2 The business of leisure
3 Regulating youth after dark
PART II: YOUTH, LIVED EXPERIENCE, AND IDENTITY
4 Gymslip drinkers
5 Leisure, consumption, and identity
Conclusion
Author
Sarah Kenny is Assistant Professor of Modern British Studies at the University of Birmingham