Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carre and the Cold War (2018). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, Sight and Sound, Arena, The Face, NME, Select, Q and The Word. He has taught at the University of Birmingham, Brunel and Queen Mary universities, and City Lit College, London. Having grown up in North Wales and lived all over the UK, he now lives in London.

“A much-needed reckoning with the way pop music has soundtracked social change, political conflict and utopian dreaming over the past 70 years. Refusing the conventional opposition between emotional or aesthetic readings of pop and ‘political’ readings, Manning brilliantly illuminates how all three mix together."

Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carre and the Cold War (2018). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, Sight and Sound, Arena, The Face, NME, Select, Q and The Word. He has taught at the University of Birmingham, Brunel and Queen Mary universities, and City Lit College, London. Having grown up in North Wales and lived all over the UK, he now lives in London.

“A much-needed reckoning with the way pop music has soundtracked social change, political conflict and utopian dreaming over the past 70 years. Refusing the conventional opposition between emotional or aesthetic readings of pop and ‘political’ readings, Manning brilliantly illuminates how all three mix together."

Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carre and the Cold War (2018). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, Sight and Sound, Arena, The Face, NME, Select, Q and The Word. He has taught at the University of Birmingham, Brunel and Queen Mary universities, and City Lit College, London. Having grown up in North Wales and lived all over the UK, he now lives in London.

“A much-needed reckoning with the way pop music has soundtracked social change, political conflict and utopian dreaming over the past 70 years. Refusing the conventional opposition between emotional or aesthetic readings of pop and ‘political’ readings, Manning brilliantly illuminates how all three mix together."