Caroline Sullivan at The Guardian:
At its core, goth is an alternative lifestyle that finds beauty in the dark and melancholy aspects of life, using music, literature and cinema as guideposts. It can be a mere fashion preference, but for the fully committed, it’s a design for life. Lol Tolhurst, a longtime adherent, believes it is “a way to understand the world” – and as relevant a form of cultural rebellion now as it was in the 1980s. Goth: A History eloquently presents his case, up to his concluding assertion that goth’s “beautiful, bleak wave of art” is an ideal form of resistance against “the terrible slide our world is taking toward oppressive authoritarianism”. At the very least, he argues, “something good” will come of it, though he doesn’t say what.
As a source, Tolhurst is hard to beat. In 1978, he and his Crawley schoolmates, Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey, formed one of goth’s foundational bands, the Cure, which put him at the heart of the emerging culture.
more here.