1980–1999

Abstract

This final chapter once again deals with two decades: the 1980s and 1990s, bringing us up to the end of the second millennium. As before, in pursuit of clarity the timeline narratives are given separately for each decade. But the problem here, as we approach our own recent past, is the seemingly exponential growth of possible material to include, since time and historians have not yet had a chance to select out the salient grand narratives of our times. As Salman Rushdie tellingly put it in Midnight’s Children: ‘the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems — but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.’ For the last 20 years of the 20th Century, the reader is invited to reshape the materials presented here to forge their own narrative of the ‘incredible’ present.