A unique evocation of Britain at the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule, A Journey Through Ruins views the transformation of the country through the unexpected prism of every day life in East London, with a cast of characters that includes council tenants in tower blocks, middle-class gentrifiers, sharp-eyed estate agents and management consultants, and even Prince Charles. Cutting through the teeming surface of London, itinvestigates a number of wider themes: the rise and dramatic fall of council housing, the coming of privatization, the changing memory of the Second World War. Written half a century after the blitz, the book reviews the rise and fall of the London of the post-war settlement. It remains one of the very bestaccounts of what it was like to live through the Thatcher years.