A memoir and cultural history the World's End, a West London area once home to bohemian artists and punk rock and now an outpost of neoliberalism. Charlie Gere's account of growing up in the World's End area of West London during the Cold War combines local history, cultural history, memoir, and a strong sense of the apocalyptic. Once a rundown part of Chelsea at the wrong end of the King's Road, the World's End has long been a place for bohemian writers and artists, including Turner, Whistler, Beckett, Bacon, and Bacon's muse Henrietta Moraes, all of whom evinced an appropriate apocalyptic sensibility. After World War II, in which the area suffered severe bombing, it became a center of the counterculture that emerged from what Jeff Nuttall called "Bomb Culture," formed by the threat of nuclear annihilation.
The famous boutique Granny Takes a Trip opened there in 1966, joined later on by Hung On You, Puss Weber's Flying Dragon Tea Room, and the commune Gandalf's Garden. The area also featured trepanning aristocrats and pet lions, among other eccentricities. In the 1970s, the World's End was the center of punk rock. Gere's parents arrived as part of a wave of gentrification, and Gere, born and brought up there, witnessed its social and cultural evolution. As an adolescent, he was traumatized by the prospect of nuclear war. He has lived long enough to see the World's End now bearing the marks of out-of-control neoliberalism and its grotesque accompanying inequality. But this too shall pass as worlds end.
《世界的盡頭：一部回憶錄與文化歷史》是關於倫敦西部一個曾經是波希米亞藝術家和龐克搖滾的家園，現在卻成為新自由主義的前哨站。
查理·基爾（Charlie Gere）在冷戰期間成長於倫敦西部的世界盡頭地區，他的敘述結合了當地歷史、文化歷史、回憶錄以及強烈的末世感。世界的盡頭曾是切爾西（Chelsea）一個破舊的區域，位於國王大道（King's Road）的錯誤一端，長期以來一直是波希米亞作家和藝術家的聚集地，包括特納（Turner）、惠斯勒（Whistler）、貝克特（Beckett）、培根（Bacon）以及培根的靈感來源亨麗埃塔·莫拉斯（Henrietta Moraes），他們都展現了適當的末世感知。二戰後，該地區遭受了嚴重轟炸，成為從傑夫·納塔爾（Jeff Nuttall）所稱的「炸彈文化」（Bomb Culture）中出現的反文化中心，這種文化是由核毀滅的威脅所形成的。
著名的精品店「奶奶帶你旅行」（Granny Takes a Trip）於1966年在此開業，隨後加入了「Hung On You」、「普斯·韋伯的飛龍茶室」（Puss Weber's Flying Dragon Tea Room）和公社「甘道夫的花園」（Gandalf's Garden）。該地區還有穿鑿的貴族和寵物獅子等其他古怪現象。在1970年代，世界的盡頭成為龐克搖滾的中心。基爾的父母作為一波紛擾的紳士化潮流而來，而基爾在此出生和成長，目睹了這裡的社會和文化演變。作為青少年，他因核戰爭的前景而受到創傷。他活得夠久，看到世界的盡頭如今承受著失控的新自由主義及其伴隨的可怕不平等。但這一切也將隨著世界的結束而過去。
Charlie Gere is Professor of Media Theory and History at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University and author of I Hate the Lake District (Goldsmiths Press).
