Unbound publisher asked interested readers to financially support a book before publication and succeeded. The result of this grassroots operation is an amazing book called We Can Be Heroes, by amateur photographer Graham Smith and former Blue Rondo à la Turk frontman and club promoter Chris Sullivan.

It’s a story of London life in clubs during the Eighties, in the years leading up to acid house. Particularly striking are the photos of the New Romantic era and its aftermath, full characters of a brilliant, defiant ridiculousness; but serious and with an almost tragic aura.

Graham Smith explained how he decided to do this book: “As a teenager seeing The Clash and The Sex Pistols changed my life. Punks empowering message of ‘Get up off your arse and do something creative’ struck home. Most picked up guitars; my weapon of choice was a camera. I wanted to photograph bands… so, I did. Then I shot the emerging London clubbing scene that rose from Punk’s ashes. I’ve had the negatives stashed away in the attic for all these years, the majority never printed, let alone published. Two years ago the old Punk spirit reared its head again as I suddenly had the urge to dust them down and produce this book“. And he added: “As well as my 500 photos and Chris’s 30,000 words of text, there’ll be an introduction by Robert Elms, memoirs by Boy George, Gary Kemp and Steve Strange and 500 pithy quotes from more than fifty of the main faces on the scene. It will be a beautifully designed piece of social history told by those that created the scene: an amazing gift for anyone who was there and I hope, an inspiration for those who weren’t“.