Almost as soon as it was built, London suffered the first of many acts of violent protest, when Boudica and her followers set fire to the city in AD 60. Ever since, the capital's streets have been a forum for popular insurrection.

Covering nearly 2,000 years of protest – from Wat Tyler to the G20 - this is the story of an alternative London, and an alternative history of the British Isles: outside parliamentary processes and in direct confrontation with the forces of the state. It is a story of political activism expressed in street fighting and slum warfare, in assassination and bombing, peopled by a fascinating array of demagogues, democrats, bigots and social revolutionaries. It is also the story of the growth of London as a capital and as a major city.

This fully revised and comprehensive edition contains new chapters on the 7/7 attacks, the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson, recent environmental, anti-capitalist and libertarian protest, and a discussion of the importance of current laws on terrorism, civil rights and the policing of protests.