Another indispensible read would be the first two Adrian Mole books by Sue Townsend. They are “diaries” of a boy of that age at that time, written first person and very accurate.
I grew up in that era (I’m a couple of years younger than your character), but it’s very hard to generalise about what boys as a group were up to, as it is now I guess.
Music in general was popular. What type of music a person in their early teens liked liked was much less varied than it is today. This was the era of music videos and “AM radio” when popular music was genuinely popular. So although punk, reggae and rap all had strong followings in the adult market at the time, a young teenager is very unlikely to have been following anything that wasn’t in the Top 10. Much more likely are the standard 80s acts, and the best way to find out what they are is simply do a search on top selling singles/ albums at the time you are writing about. Mostly “New Wave” stuff like Culture Club or Duran Duran with a bit of middle of the road rock like Billy Joel. That is what the typical teenager would have been listening too. 80s hair metal hadn’t really established as a pop culture phenomenon in the early 80s, and although certain segments of the teen market were certainly have been listening to the likes of Motley Crue those acts didn’t get much airplay.
While on the subject of music, the same stuff was popular in England as in the US". Music videos were just starting to make a big splash, Walkmen and the associated knock-offs were the Ipods of the day, though less common amongst early teenagers because they were much more expensive relatively.
Television shows weren’t a a lot different for the US. “The Young Ones” is about the only show popular amongst teens that I can think of that wasn’t a direct US import, and it was very popular in the early 80s. Beyond that everyone was watching just what kids in the US were watching: The Cosby Show, A-Team, Miami Vice and so forth.
Movies were even more common between the US and England. I’m having a hard time thinking of any movies that weren’t equally popular in both countries. The English film industry was going through a bit of a slump, so aside from the James Bond franchise there wasn’t much UK specific material around. We were watching Highlander and Back to the Future and the Police Academy Movies and all the standard teenfare that the kids in the US were watching.
Video games were popular, the Atari home units if you were reasonably wealthy, rich but everyone wasted their money on the coin operated version at the local arcade or chippy. There were still a fair few pinball machines around, but we generally considered them boring and for an older crowd. There weren’t any specific games that I can remember were particularly popular, just the standard run of the mill arcade stuff. the other thing that was very popular were the little hand held LCD games. these were forerunners of the Game Boy, but they only played one game. So you had to buy one for
This was also the height of the home computer craze. Large numbers of teenagers anted a computer and large numbers were bought. Whether they were used for programming or just to play games depended a lot on what crowd you hung with.
In terms of school life I think you really can’t go past the Adrian Mole books. To me they are amazingly accurate. One thing that always strikes me looking back is how little sexual activity and drug use occurred. Of course it was happening, but it was nowhere near as common as today and certainly nowhere near as open.
Slang you should avoid? All of it really. Slang was even less standardised and even more ephemeral than than today. An expression might become popular after it appeared in a movie, but it would probably vanish within 6 months and anyone using it even 1 2months later was probably doing it for laughs. Think valley girl style “so 5 minutes ago”. There really wasn’t any 80s slang So if you are going to use any slang that hasn’t remained current since the 60s until today such as “cool” give it a context. For example I remember a lot of people using “heavy” after it appeared in “Back to the Future”, so if your character has just seen that movie it’s Unless you have some really reliable reference that a slang expression was commonly used int he suburb at that time, don’t use it. was
Also avoid the cultural cliches unless you have a good reason. London at that time had a lot of Neo-Fascist skinheads, but they were nowhere near as common as most literature portrays them. Yes you would often see a “gang” of three or four on the streets, but they were noteworthy for being so rare and so obvious. I’m guessing that less than one in 10, 000 teenagers every actually adopted a single aspect of skinhead culture beyond wearing Docs, and less than one in a thousand ever wore Docs.
The same can be said of Breakdancers, Rastas, Yuppies, Anarchists and any other aspect of 80s popular culture. Literature, whether retrospective or “made by 40 year old executives” contemporary literature always makes than far more common than they were in reality. These groups all existed and they were regularly seen “in the wild” but they were notable for their rarity. So don’t write them into every scene and don’t give them undue importance. Your character would regularly see all of these groups, but it’s not like they were ever more than a tiny fraction of the population.
The status of Russian immigrants? Essentially non existent. This was the height of the Cold War remember. Russia was still largely a sealed state, almost nobody was let out. Probably less than 100 people each were allowed to officially emigrate at all at the time you are talking about, and most of those would have been Jews moving to Israel. To be a teenage Russian living in London at that stage your family had some interesting history behind it. You really need to explain how they got out because it wasn’t a simple as applying for a passport or even swimming the Rio Grande. It was often a case of avoiding soldiers and attack dogs. You probably should start by reading some of the online stories of Russian refugees/ defectors from the period when this family escaped. To be released officially you needed to find another state that would accept you, and if you weren’t Jewish that was very uncommon because you were unlikely to have sponsors in foreign nations by that stage. Even if you could find another state your applioctaion was almost certain to be refused.
So Russian immigrants didn’t really have a status. It was unlikely that anyone had ever met a Russian. They must have assimilated quickly simply because there were no other Russians to form enlcaves with. You coudl find that ststistics, but I would be surpised to find more than a few thousand post WWII Russian immigrants living in the whole of London at this time. Looked on with suspicion? I doubt it. They would have been considered refugees form Communism, which was the great enemy at the time. Remember these were the Thatcher/Reagan years and the Soviet people were very much portrayed as the victims of their evil government. They would have been viewed much the same as Vietnamese refugees were viewed in the US at the time. A child would become something of a celebrity with the local kids simply because the only Russians anyone ever saw were in spy movies. It would be a bit like having a real life Martian in the class.
Having said that there was a fair bit of anti-immigrant tension in London at this time. That was largely directed at Asians, and since Russians are white they would have avoided most of the Skinhead aggravation. Indeed many skinhead gangs at the time were proud to have white immigrants in the group to show that they were all about white solidarity. Even so it is almost certain they would have copped nasty comments from a few individuals, just as likely older people as young Skins.
