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Blitz: The Club That Created the Eighties
'Elms is one of the greatest chroniclers of our age. He was born to write this book.' Dylan Jones
'Fantastic! It is like time travel . . . [to] the most exciting, innovative, outrageous, wildest, most creative club ever.' Steve Dagger
'Elms was not only in the room where it happened, he was at the very heart of it.' Gary Kemp
'The perfect witness and open-minded, outward looking, and an expert and shrewd cultural analyst.' Lavinia Greenlaw
'Sharp, funny and caked in two-day old eyeliner.' Jodie Harsh
A history of the club that set the '80s alight, by the much-loved presenter, writer and Blitz attendee Robert Elms.
The short-lived Blitz club in London's Covent Garden was more than somewhere to hang out or be 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 John Galliano. 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.
'Fantastic! It is like time travel . . . [to] the most exciting, innovative, outrageous, wildest, most creative club ever.' Steve Dagger
'Elms was not only in the room where it happened, he was at the very heart of it.' Gary Kemp
'The perfect witness and open-minded, outward looking, and an expert and shrewd cultural analyst.' Lavinia Greenlaw
'Sharp, funny and caked in two-day old eyeliner.' Jodie Harsh
A history of the club that set the '80s alight, by the much-loved presenter, writer and Blitz attendee Robert Elms.
The short-lived Blitz club in London's Covent Garden was more than somewhere to hang out or be 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 John Galliano. 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.
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Published September 23, 2025
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About the author
Robert Elms
14 books18 followersRobert Elms is a British writer and broadcaster. Elms was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s and is currently known for his long-running radio show on BBC London 94.9. His book 'The Way We Wore,' charts the changing fashions of his own youth, linking them with the social history of the times.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 7, 2026
If you think you’re about to read an objective chronicle of a small scene that became briefly fashionable, you’ve picked the wrong book. This is an insanely self-aggrandising account written by a London-centric insider who never quite left the dancefloor - at least, not mentally.
Worse still, Robert Elms offers a perfectly sealed echo chamber of what were clearly his “glory days”. The result is that a brief moment in time - young people going out dancing in Soho dressed like peacocks on a budget - is inflated into an earth-shattering, era-defining, culture-shifting movement that apparently reshaped the future.
I could even forgive that kind of historical bloating. After all, the Blitz/New Romantic scene did have some limited, but real influence. What I could not forgive is the writing.
The pedestrian prose. The endless repetition. The laboured attempts at wit. And - capital sin - the unholy trinity of lazy adjectives.
A few examples, for the record:
1. Pedestrian prose “Can you imagine the faces of the weary commuters on the Tube, only to see this rowdy gang of magnificent macaronis partying for all they were worth?” Yes, I can. I can also imagine most of those commuters glancing briefly before returning to their reading or, more likely, their own business, because Londoners always had a high tolerance for people dressed like rejected extras from a futuristic operetta. What Elms offers is not observation but direction: a little film in which he and his friends are the show and the rest of the world obligingly gawks.
2. The council estate refrain We are reminded - relentlessly - that Elms and his circle were council estate kids, skint, on the dole, living in squats, without a pot to piss in. And yet, miraculously, always impeccably styled, endlessly inventive, culturally ahead of their time, proto–gender fluid, anti-Thatcher (in retrospect, of course), and - why not - proto-influencers. One begins to suspect that hardship here functions less as context and more as branding.
3. Cringeworthy grandiosity
“1978 morphed angrily into 1979 – the infamous winter of our discontent” (apologies to Shakespeare).
“A generation of Londoners exiled from their ancestral homeland” (we’re talking about Romford, not Mesopotamia).
“Extraordinary creatures” (one half expects unicorns).
And the unforgettable: “a weekly winner-takes-all BUNFIGHT of the vanities” - a phrase so overcooked it collapses under its own pretension.
4. The unholy trinity: ‘effortlessly’, ‘fiercely’, ‘vibrant’ .
“Effortlessly” is probably the most dishonest word in the English language - code for effort cleverly concealed.
“Fiercely” is added like pepper to rescue otherwise limp adjectives (most often “independent”, usually applied to women).
“Vibrant” means… something positive. Colourful? Energetic? Loud? Fashionable? Vivid? Feisty? Dynamic? All of the above and none in particular. A word that signals approval without committing to meaning.
The endless name-dropping, which inevitably comes with this territory (even if most of it obscure to anyone not already inside the club), could perhaps be tolerated. But combined with the above, it turns the book into an exhausting exercise in self-mythologising.
Which is a pity. In the hands of a sharper, more detached observer, this could have been a witty, incisive 60-page essay about a scene where thirty people attended, five became famous, twenty-five wrote books about it, and a hundred more later claimed it defined an era.
Instead, we get 284 pages.
David Bowie - the idol of this crowd - sang: “We live for just these twenty years / Do we have to die for the fifty more?”
Robert Elms’ answer is a resounding: NO - we can simply spend the next fifty years talking about the previous twenty.
At considerable length.
Worse still, Robert Elms offers a perfectly sealed echo chamber of what were clearly his “glory days”. The result is that a brief moment in time - young people going out dancing in Soho dressed like peacocks on a budget - is inflated into an earth-shattering, era-defining, culture-shifting movement that apparently reshaped the future.
I could even forgive that kind of historical bloating. After all, the Blitz/New Romantic scene did have some limited, but real influence. What I could not forgive is the writing.
The pedestrian prose. The endless repetition. The laboured attempts at wit. And - capital sin - the unholy trinity of lazy adjectives.
A few examples, for the record:
1. Pedestrian prose “Can you imagine the faces of the weary commuters on the Tube, only to see this rowdy gang of magnificent macaronis partying for all they were worth?” Yes, I can. I can also imagine most of those commuters glancing briefly before returning to their reading or, more likely, their own business, because Londoners always had a high tolerance for people dressed like rejected extras from a futuristic operetta. What Elms offers is not observation but direction: a little film in which he and his friends are the show and the rest of the world obligingly gawks.
2. The council estate refrain We are reminded - relentlessly - that Elms and his circle were council estate kids, skint, on the dole, living in squats, without a pot to piss in. And yet, miraculously, always impeccably styled, endlessly inventive, culturally ahead of their time, proto–gender fluid, anti-Thatcher (in retrospect, of course), and - why not - proto-influencers. One begins to suspect that hardship here functions less as context and more as branding.
3. Cringeworthy grandiosity
“1978 morphed angrily into 1979 – the infamous winter of our discontent” (apologies to Shakespeare).
“A generation of Londoners exiled from their ancestral homeland” (we’re talking about Romford, not Mesopotamia).
“Extraordinary creatures” (one half expects unicorns).
And the unforgettable: “a weekly winner-takes-all BUNFIGHT of the vanities” - a phrase so overcooked it collapses under its own pretension.
4. The unholy trinity: ‘effortlessly’, ‘fiercely’, ‘vibrant’ .
“Effortlessly” is probably the most dishonest word in the English language - code for effort cleverly concealed.
“Fiercely” is added like pepper to rescue otherwise limp adjectives (most often “independent”, usually applied to women).
“Vibrant” means… something positive. Colourful? Energetic? Loud? Fashionable? Vivid? Feisty? Dynamic? All of the above and none in particular. A word that signals approval without committing to meaning.
The endless name-dropping, which inevitably comes with this territory (even if most of it obscure to anyone not already inside the club), could perhaps be tolerated. But combined with the above, it turns the book into an exhausting exercise in self-mythologising.
Which is a pity. In the hands of a sharper, more detached observer, this could have been a witty, incisive 60-page essay about a scene where thirty people attended, five became famous, twenty-five wrote books about it, and a hundred more later claimed it defined an era.
Instead, we get 284 pages.
David Bowie - the idol of this crowd - sang: “We live for just these twenty years / Do we have to die for the fifty more?”
Robert Elms’ answer is a resounding: NO - we can simply spend the next fifty years talking about the previous twenty.
At considerable length.
October 26, 2025
Thoroughly enjoyed the effortless storytelling. He really paints a vivid picture of a movement that led to other movements across the creative fields. Also, a London that’s long gone, in ways both good and bad. The journey to recent modernism started with a small club with those who didn’t conform to an identity. Individualism was the key but it must be done with style!
November 1, 2025
Robert Elms is a great writer and cultural historian. As someone who regularly attended both Blitz and the Bowie night at Billys which preceded Blitz, I was very excited to read this book. Robert Elms absolutely nails the experience of both club nights. He was much more of an insider than me and so I was fascinated in huge swathes of this book.
He also fully contextualises the club and its era, and goes on to reflect on its legacy.
It's brilliant.
My guess is that a reader with a general interest should still find plenty to enjoy and appreciate. I'll be reading other reviews with interest to discover if this is the general consensus.
5/5
'Elms is one of the greatest chroniclers of our age. He was born to write this book.' Dylan Jones
'Fantastic! It is like time travel . . . [to] the most exciting, innovative, outrageous, wildest, most creative club ever.' Steve Dagger
'Elms was not only in the room where it happened, he was at the very heart of it.' Gary Kemp
'The perfect witness and open-minded, outward looking, and an expert and shrewd cultural analyst.' Lavinia Greenlaw
'Sharp, funny and caked in two-day old eyeliner.' Jodie Harsh
A history of the club that set the '80s alight, by the much-loved presenter, writer and Blitz attendee Robert Elms.
The short-lived Blitz club in London's Covent Garden was more than somewhere to hang out or be 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.
He also fully contextualises the club and its era, and goes on to reflect on its legacy.
It's brilliant.
My guess is that a reader with a general interest should still find plenty to enjoy and appreciate. I'll be reading other reviews with interest to discover if this is the general consensus.
5/5
'Elms is one of the greatest chroniclers of our age. He was born to write this book.' Dylan Jones
'Fantastic! It is like time travel . . . [to] the most exciting, innovative, outrageous, wildest, most creative club ever.' Steve Dagger
'Elms was not only in the room where it happened, he was at the very heart of it.' Gary Kemp
'The perfect witness and open-minded, outward looking, and an expert and shrewd cultural analyst.' Lavinia Greenlaw
'Sharp, funny and caked in two-day old eyeliner.' Jodie Harsh
A history of the club that set the '80s alight, by the much-loved presenter, writer and Blitz attendee Robert Elms.
The short-lived Blitz club in London's Covent Garden was more than somewhere to hang out or be 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.
December 14, 2025
Steve's club night at the Blitz brought a touch of colour to an otherwise drab venue. It's documented that Steve and Rusty never attached a name to their Tuesday club night at the venue - and referred to it as either the club night at the Blitz, or a private party. The Blitz was already a trendy Covent Garden restaurant that hosted cabaret nights before Steve and Rusty arrived there. After Steve and Rusty left the venue, it continued to be the Blitz for many years afterwards. Hence, Elms's naming of the book "Blitz" is confusing. The Blitz was the name of the venue. It was the media who dubbed Steve's clubbers as Blitz Kids. Steve was always adamant it was a cult with no name. He hated attaching labels to things.
I went to Steve's club a couple of times. I recollect that the interior was naff. The sound system was scratchy. It was the venue's smallness that kept the night exclusive. Don't forget, the biggest, most successful club night in London at the time was the gay club BANG in Charing Cross Road, which attracted at least 1500 every Monday and Thursday.
Steve's club was more of a shop window for the young artistic crowd, who also went to BANG, located a few doors from St Martin's Fashion School. You didn't go to Steve's club to pull; you went to pose. That summed it up for me.
At the end of 1979, Heaven gay club opened in Charing Cross. BANG and Heaven were dance clubs; Steve's club night at the Blitz was not a dance club. There's only so much posing you can do. Getting down dirty on the dance floor is much more exciting. I always found Steve to be very softly spoken and polite. Not in the least bit like he has been portrayed on film.
I learned nothing new from this book.
I went to Steve's club a couple of times. I recollect that the interior was naff. The sound system was scratchy. It was the venue's smallness that kept the night exclusive. Don't forget, the biggest, most successful club night in London at the time was the gay club BANG in Charing Cross Road, which attracted at least 1500 every Monday and Thursday.
Steve's club was more of a shop window for the young artistic crowd, who also went to BANG, located a few doors from St Martin's Fashion School. You didn't go to Steve's club to pull; you went to pose. That summed it up for me.
At the end of 1979, Heaven gay club opened in Charing Cross. BANG and Heaven were dance clubs; Steve's club night at the Blitz was not a dance club. There's only so much posing you can do. Getting down dirty on the dance floor is much more exciting. I always found Steve to be very softly spoken and polite. Not in the least bit like he has been portrayed on film.
I learned nothing new from this book.
March 9, 2026
Blitz by Robert Elms walks you through a long-disappeared version of London - a vivid club full of vibrant characters that feel as real as they were when the club ran. You can feel the atmosphere, as if you are walking through each scene that Elms lays out in front of you, transported back to the colorful nights in Covent Garden.
For readers with little to no knowledge of the music and underground culture of the 80s, this book will grab you and leave you hungry to learn more. For those of us who have dipped our toes (or who have jumped right in), the tangible energy of Elms' writing will bring a fresh, expressive perspective.
For readers with little to no knowledge of the music and underground culture of the 80s, this book will grab you and leave you hungry to learn more. For those of us who have dipped our toes (or who have jumped right in), the tangible energy of Elms' writing will bring a fresh, expressive perspective.
February 24, 2026
The books I have read lately have been fuelling my love for the 80’s: music, fashion, culture, etc. This is no exception! I was reading and listening to this at the same time as I was reading Rusty Egan’s autobiography so I was 100% immersed in Blitz energy!
This is very well researched and written and there are many insider’s stories as Elms was an original member of the Blitz kids. I felt as if I really was there, dancing, talking, living with all these wonderful people. Thank you for a trip down memory lane (which I did not live but have fantasized about a lot!).
This is very well researched and written and there are many insider’s stories as Elms was an original member of the Blitz kids. I felt as if I really was there, dancing, talking, living with all these wonderful people. Thank you for a trip down memory lane (which I did not live but have fantasized about a lot!).
March 23, 2026
Thoroughly enjoyable read, rattled through it. His passion and enthusiasm are infectious but enough time has elapsed since this all happened for the author to be able to step back a bit and assess the impact of this movement, which he's also good at doing. Recommend seeing the exhibition at the Design Museum before end of March 2026, which is what inspired me to read the book.
January 7, 2026
I very much enjoyed this book. It's the time and music of my youth, and Elms is a good writer/reader. There is joy here, bravery, indulgence, expression, and abandon.
February 26, 2026
Great book. So many tales told from such a great, inspiring time
January 13, 2026
Listened to the audiobook. It was OK, a nice trip down 80s memory lane, but the author/narrator was boring to listen to and most of the content I’d already read elsewhere.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews