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Distributed for UCL Press

Student London

A New History of Higher Education in the Capital

Distributed for UCL Press

Student London

A New History of Higher Education in the Capital

Centers student experiences in London’s history to tell the two-hundred-year story of student life in the capital. 

Offering a detailed examination of life at the original London University (known as University College London since 1836) and many other institutions, this book captures a range of higher education experiences and perspectives in London. With insights into histories of education, class, gender, race, LGBTQ+ culture, leisure, politics, protest, housing, and charity in the capital, Student London draws on a rich and wide-ranging source base that includes several hundred student memoirs and oral history interviews; student newspapers, magazines, and film; visual and material culture; and Mass Observation data, court reports, and secret service files.


560 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2026

Education: Higher Education


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Table of Contents

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
A note on terminology
Timeline of relevant institutional changes

Introduction
1 London’s first university and its students, 1826–1858
2 Mid-Victorian London, 1858–1890
3 London students at the fin de siècle, 1890–1914
4 The Great War and the reconstruction of university life, 1914–1930
5 Modernity interrupted, 1930–1945
6 Austerity London, 1945–1963
7 Student life in ‘swinging London’, 1963–1979
8 Cutbacks and commercialisation, 1979–2003
9 Into the twenty-first century

Appendix: oral history
Select bibliography
Index

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