London's Burning

From the early years of the nineteenth century, cultural pessimists imagined in fiction the political forces that might bring about the destruction of London. This title provides a reading of the popular fiction of London historicized in its political and cultural contexts.

Introduction; 1. Wat Tyler, Jack Cade and the Threat of Peasant Revolt in Mid-Nineteenth Century London; 2. Anarchism and the Literature of Terror in the Metropolitan Imagination; 3. Red Scares and Post-World War I London; 4. Fascist Britain; 5. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in London from the 1960s; 6. Radical Islamism in Recent Metropolitan Fiction; Conclusion.