Oxford Street, London 1970

A classic West End street scene from the start of the decade, with a Route 14 Routemaster (JJD 379D) heading toward King’s Cross while shoppers and office workers stream along the busy pavement. The shopfronts on the left are wonderfully typical of Oxford Street at the time: Moccasin – The Shoes to Choose (run by Cleveland Shoe Co. Ltd), followed by Davids, a long-established menswear store offering everything from smart suits to shirts and ties.

Further ahead, hanging over the pavement, is the familiar banner for Foyles, the legendary family-run bookshop which maintained a separate Oxford Street frontage alongside its main Charing Cross Road premises. Smaller signs for cafés, hairdressers and tailoring services add to the dense commercial feel that characterised the street before large-scale redevelopment swept much of it away in later decades.

The mix of bowler hats, narrow-lapelled suits, miniskirts and shoulder-length hair marks this as a moment of transition: the last gasp of traditional City style mingling with the fashions of the Swinging Sixties. Meanwhile, the Routemaster – the quintessential London bus of the era – anchors the scene firmly in the capital of 1970.