The short-lived Blitz club in London’s Covent Garden was more than somewhere to hang out or be seen: it was a catalyst for cultural explosion, a counter-culture blast against everything Thatcher’s leadership had ushered in by the dawn of the 80s. Tuesday nights boasted a ferocious, fearless cast – from Boy George and Spandau Ballet to Grayson Perry and Peter Doig, to Michele Clapton, Sade and Alexander McQueen. This was the vanguard of a different England; socially liberal, loud, proud and diverse, fiercely individualistic and determined to succeed. Britain was black and white; the Blitz Kids switched on the colour.

In Blitz, Elms reflects on a club night founded by working-class kids, one whose impact reverberated beyond its doors, through the worlds of Art, Literature, Fashion and Music, and into the present day.

Robert Elms has seen his beloved city change beyond all imagining. London in his lifetime has morphed from a piratical, still bomb-scarred playground, to a swish cosmopolitan metropolis. Motorways driven through lost communities, murder miles becoming estate agents’ dreams, accents changing, towers appearing. Yet still it remains to him the greatest place on earth.

Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms’ home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.