Customer Rating:  
Summary: Essential Reading - guidebook to Iain Sinclair's London
Comment: This is an excellent book. I've taken it on many a London adventure and it never fails to shed light on forgotten corners of the city. If you like Iain Sincliar, Stewart Home, Peter Ackroyd et al and decide to go and see it for yourself Glinert will show you the way. This book is at its strongest when describing areas of London that you feel you may already know, like Clerkenwell, Fleet Street, Bloomsbury, Temple.
The only downside is the ommission of the outer suburbs, so areas such as the Lea Valley, Epping Forest, Harrow, Stonebridge Park, Crouch End etc. don't get a look in. But this is the nearest you're going to get to the great London books of the 1920's-1950's (Clunn, Maxwell, Kent, Fletcher).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Capital understatement
Comment: It would be an ambitious writer who would claim to give a "street-by-street exploration" of London. Whilst Ed Glinert gives a valiant attempt, he must by definition fail to live up to everyone's expectations.
I lived there once and return now and then, so I have a reasonable grasp of the place. And yes I did learn some things about some people in some places. But Glinert's London is not my London. The People Index at the end shows the usual suspects - kings and queens - having the greatest number of references, but there is also a large number of references to 1960s culture. And indeed, the subject index gives away Mr Glinert's true interests, where art and rock music vie for prime position with gangsters and murders. He seems to have a fascination for his (misspent?) youth where the Kray twins regularly pop up alongside fashion and rock venues. So, although the book, does have merit, it's not my chosen guide to "the hidden metropolis".
PS. The section on the river Thames does not really work. In any future edition the features described should be absorbed into the geographical area sections.
Customer Rating:
Summary: sadly out of date
Comment: London changes and so all books like this are doomed to date. However, this one seems out of date already (after only 2 years?) and is further marred by too many broad generalisations. Ask any Londoner, and they will say that it is the small specific detail that charms and delights. An over-broad, out of date travel guide. Sorry.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Did the author really walk the streets?
Comment: Based only on the section on Southwark and London Bridge, I do wonder whether the author really did walk those streets, and if he did was it about 20 years ago? He seems almost to have lifted a hackneyed impression of the area from a book published long before this one, when the area really was "run down and blight ridden" - it doesn't reflect the buzzing, aspirational and fashionable area of today.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Comment: I have lived in London all my life and this little gem of a book has told me many wonderful stories that I didn't know. Basically the book is divided up into areas / streets in London. You look up where you're going and in an instant you have a clearly written guide to the streets history - what it's best known for - famous folks who have lived there. And it's small enough to carry around. Lovely.
|
