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London Orbital
Encircling London like a noose, the M25 is a road to nowhere, but when Iain Sinclair sets out to walk this asphalt loop - keeping within the 'acoustic footprints' - he is determined to find out where the journey will lead him. Stumbling upon converted asylums, industrial and retail parks, ring-fenced government institutions and lost villages, Sinclair discovers a Britain of the fringes, a landscape consumed by developers. London Orbital charts this extraordinary trek and round trip of the soul, revealing the country as you've never seen it before
577 pages, Paperback
First published October 5, 2002
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About the author
Iain Sinclair
120 books341 followersIain Sinclair is a British writer and film maker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
February 22, 2020
Well, what can I say? I doubt there has ever been an author who took “doing the legwork” more seriously, or more literally.
It all starts with rage, as so often. Utterly infuriated by the Millennium Dome project, Iain Sinclair decides to WALK AROUND London, in an orbit following the M25, the London Orbital, in a counterclockwise movement, exploring the surrounding area as far as it is accessible for pedestrians:
“We hadn’t walked around the perimeter of London, we had circumnavigated the Dome. At safe distance. Away from its poisoned heritage. Its bad will, mendacity. The tent could consider itself exorcised.”
With different friends in several phases, over the course of two years, and equipped for the weather (most of the time), he walks and meticulously notes what he sees and hears, and adds anecdotes on people who have lived in, or passed through, the areas he explores. Blisters, lack of breakfast-serving pubs, lost umbrellas or cameras out of order are part of the adventure, just like roads that lead nowhere, rubble, trash, broken and left-behind vehicles and consumer goods.
He shares stories of the rich and the poor inhabitants of Greater London, reflecting on present and past, gangsters and politicians, writers and artists, businesses and landscapes, both industrial and natural.
The hyperrealistic zooming in of mostly ignored parts of London’s periphery has a strange effect on the reader, who has to slow down the pace and take in the book in the same way a pedestrian takes in the M25’s atmosphere, step by step, detail by detail, road by road.
While staying in the concrete, on the concrete, Sinclair’s London-walk-mirrored-in-text turns into a fantasy of random information, added endlessly while following the traffic circling the historical nucleus of the city. The roads are connected, but form no coherent storyline, they just lead on and on, delivering details of meaningless encounters. In a way, the descriptions remind me of Piranesi’s gigantic architectural compositions: hyperrealistic in detail, scarily dystopian in content. Reality as a strange maze, leading nowhere.
This certainly is not a book that can be easily consumed in an afternoon or two. It took me more than six months to work my way through it, slowly, with breaks. The author himself invites to those breaks as well, constantly looking for a good pub to relax with a pint, or to change socks. More often than not, I had to interrupt my reading to consult maps, books or photographs, as the walk around London Orbital is simultaneously a walk around London’s history as described in its literature.
I am quite sure I will not follow the itinerary of the novel in real life, but it was a fascinating walk in the mind!
It all starts with rage, as so often. Utterly infuriated by the Millennium Dome project, Iain Sinclair decides to WALK AROUND London, in an orbit following the M25, the London Orbital, in a counterclockwise movement, exploring the surrounding area as far as it is accessible for pedestrians:
“We hadn’t walked around the perimeter of London, we had circumnavigated the Dome. At safe distance. Away from its poisoned heritage. Its bad will, mendacity. The tent could consider itself exorcised.”
With different friends in several phases, over the course of two years, and equipped for the weather (most of the time), he walks and meticulously notes what he sees and hears, and adds anecdotes on people who have lived in, or passed through, the areas he explores. Blisters, lack of breakfast-serving pubs, lost umbrellas or cameras out of order are part of the adventure, just like roads that lead nowhere, rubble, trash, broken and left-behind vehicles and consumer goods.
He shares stories of the rich and the poor inhabitants of Greater London, reflecting on present and past, gangsters and politicians, writers and artists, businesses and landscapes, both industrial and natural.
The hyperrealistic zooming in of mostly ignored parts of London’s periphery has a strange effect on the reader, who has to slow down the pace and take in the book in the same way a pedestrian takes in the M25’s atmosphere, step by step, detail by detail, road by road.
While staying in the concrete, on the concrete, Sinclair’s London-walk-mirrored-in-text turns into a fantasy of random information, added endlessly while following the traffic circling the historical nucleus of the city. The roads are connected, but form no coherent storyline, they just lead on and on, delivering details of meaningless encounters. In a way, the descriptions remind me of Piranesi’s gigantic architectural compositions: hyperrealistic in detail, scarily dystopian in content. Reality as a strange maze, leading nowhere.
This certainly is not a book that can be easily consumed in an afternoon or two. It took me more than six months to work my way through it, slowly, with breaks. The author himself invites to those breaks as well, constantly looking for a good pub to relax with a pint, or to change socks. More often than not, I had to interrupt my reading to consult maps, books or photographs, as the walk around London Orbital is simultaneously a walk around London’s history as described in its literature.
I am quite sure I will not follow the itinerary of the novel in real life, but it was a fascinating walk in the mind!
October 1, 2012
Iain Sinclair is a dreadful writer, and some kind of genius. He is the worst possible example for other writers to emulate, of which he should be proud.
His capacity for phrase-making is extraordinary: scarcely a paragraph goes by without some sort of rancid jewel of prose. His capacity for creating satisfactory large structures is almost zero.
His sense of psychogeography - of the past figured in the mundane present - is exhilarating. His obsessive return to certain themes and characters is like a dog returning to its vomit. Interesting vomit, though.
I would read almost anything he writes, for the pleasure of throwing it aside in frustration...
His capacity for phrase-making is extraordinary: scarcely a paragraph goes by without some sort of rancid jewel of prose. His capacity for creating satisfactory large structures is almost zero.
His sense of psychogeography - of the past figured in the mundane present - is exhilarating. His obsessive return to certain themes and characters is like a dog returning to its vomit. Interesting vomit, though.
I would read almost anything he writes, for the pleasure of throwing it aside in frustration...
April 23, 2014
Tremendous. The narrative arced as a measure of validation for all the bookish types minding themselves on the margins. I cannot praise this book enough. London Orbital remains anecdotal and poetic. It has a charm and understatement. Consider the blurbs from Will Self and Russell Brand. There is a grit and presence here.
December 4, 2012
Remember the Dome? That strange New Labour project that drew us all to it to look at big stuff. I went a couple of times. I remember having a good meal in the 'posh' restaurant there. Then it died. Now people go to see Barry Manilow and Coldplay at the O2 and all memories of the Millenium are banished.
Iain Sinclair's book brings it all back. How we were on the eve of a new Millenium. Odd snippets of news remembered, anger at the developers carving up our forgotten and desolate wastelands to build their boxes and their two car carports. PFI, ecstasy, Essex before it became a tv freak show. Welcome to the end of a 1000 years.
Sinclair's book is also a tribute to those fast disappearing fringes. Accompanied by artists, photographers and the the works of writers and artists with very English sensibilities Wells, Ballard, Samuel Palmer, he explores the fringes of London around the M25, a place of abandoned madhouses, empty commuter villages and weird stories. These are the bits I like best. His bottomless mine of stories, his feel for the forgotten places, his local history of social disasters of the past.
He walks, he takes pictures, he observes and muses on the people of 1999 but Sinclair is also very funny. His wit is sharp, as is his dissection of modern phenomena such as malls like Bluewater. He enjoys fry ups, sausage rolls and tea from those funny little caffs by A roads. He observes with sympathy the folk that stand a little out of focus. He revels in those dark, out of the way places that you must walk through miles of mud and scrub and abandoned detritus to get to. He delights in tiny churches in out of the way villages. He writes about the bits in between the myths we weave about our towns and villages.
This is a portrait of London that may not sit well with the tourist board but is inescapably a true likeness.
Iain Sinclair's book brings it all back. How we were on the eve of a new Millenium. Odd snippets of news remembered, anger at the developers carving up our forgotten and desolate wastelands to build their boxes and their two car carports. PFI, ecstasy, Essex before it became a tv freak show. Welcome to the end of a 1000 years.
Sinclair's book is also a tribute to those fast disappearing fringes. Accompanied by artists, photographers and the the works of writers and artists with very English sensibilities Wells, Ballard, Samuel Palmer, he explores the fringes of London around the M25, a place of abandoned madhouses, empty commuter villages and weird stories. These are the bits I like best. His bottomless mine of stories, his feel for the forgotten places, his local history of social disasters of the past.
He walks, he takes pictures, he observes and muses on the people of 1999 but Sinclair is also very funny. His wit is sharp, as is his dissection of modern phenomena such as malls like Bluewater. He enjoys fry ups, sausage rolls and tea from those funny little caffs by A roads. He observes with sympathy the folk that stand a little out of focus. He revels in those dark, out of the way places that you must walk through miles of mud and scrub and abandoned detritus to get to. He delights in tiny churches in out of the way villages. He writes about the bits in between the myths we weave about our towns and villages.
This is a portrait of London that may not sit well with the tourist board but is inescapably a true likeness.
Read
September 27, 2022I've been a fan of Sinclair for some time, along with the whole school of London-based psychogeographic weirdos that includes Will Self, Jonathan Meades, and until he turned into conspiracy theorist willing to suck right-wing royalist dick, but back when he was a good working-class antiauthoritarian, Russell Brand. It's a bit difficult for this Yank to follow at points -- Sinclair expects a certain intimacy with the geography and intimate histories of the London Metropolitan Area, and I'm reminded of how I felt when I tried to read the New Yorker as a teenager, thinking "what the fuck is a co-op board?" But at a certain point, you don't care, the storytelling is so elegant, the rhythms so witty, that you just follow the man on his oddball perambulation, and you follow him gladly.
October 9, 2025
First of all: the author is brilliant. The bon mots fly faster dust motes in a tornado; to fully appreciate them, the reader needs a very strong grounding in (somewhat obscure aspects of) English history and culture. I didn't get into the groove of Sinclair's style until nearly the end of this 500-page opus. Don't give up, but I don't blame those who do. Getting through this book is a similar to finishing a mental marathon.
P.S. I really, really could've used at least a simple map of his route
P.S. I really, really could've used at least a simple map of his route
November 27, 2011
This was a real disappointment. As the title suggests, Iain Sinclair makes a trip around the M25, trying to define London by exploring it's outskirts. But his interests are morose, and his tone one dimensional. There are some interesting bits of history, mostly concerning the number of asylums and the smallpox hospitals, but generally, the trip is a real bore. I was really looking forward to this one, but it was dull as dishwater.
July 28, 2018
I read the exhilarating reviews and happily trotted off to buy this book. After 5 pages the grim reality of reading about a man walking around the motorway which encases London sets in. It’s boring, really boring and what’s worse all fair warning is givin. Man walking around the M25, man bored out of his skull.
May 29, 2025
Interesting account of Iain Sinclair’s project to walk around the M25 (through towns and villages but keeping the motorway in sight or earshot wherever possible) over the course of 1999 in order to end at the Millennium Dome (which he detests) for the end of the year.
Along the way there are literary and physical digressions and the recurrence of some favourite themes - abandoned asylums and the prevalence of developers building new estates, transport cafes and car parks, poets and artists and Templar churches. I particularly enjoyed the section about Dracula and his acquisition of real estate around London.
I’ve never really taken much notice of psychogeography but I found this interesting, Sinclair does have a tendency to rant about certain things (Blair and New Labour, the aforementioned developers) and the book was repetitive at times, but overall I enjoyed its variety and lively tone.
Along the way there are literary and physical digressions and the recurrence of some favourite themes - abandoned asylums and the prevalence of developers building new estates, transport cafes and car parks, poets and artists and Templar churches. I particularly enjoyed the section about Dracula and his acquisition of real estate around London.
I’ve never really taken much notice of psychogeography but I found this interesting, Sinclair does have a tendency to rant about certain things (Blair and New Labour, the aforementioned developers) and the book was repetitive at times, but overall I enjoyed its variety and lively tone.
May 2, 2014
I like the basic premise of this. There is something mildly anarchic about walking round the entire M25 – no-one walks the M25 and you don’t see your surroundings as you drive, not even when you’re stuck in a traffic jam (which is often). It’s trampled on and devastated much of the home-counties - which is progress of a kind I suppose in our rush to become a global economy - but we’ve lost a lot along the way. And it’s true to say you only notice things properly when you walk.
Nonetheless the book is way too long. I got bored somewhere between the M4 and Leatherhead and I didn’t touch it for months. In fact I wouldn’t have finished it all if it hadn’t appeared transiently on the `1001 books list’ and that would have been a pity because it contains some real gems. Iain Sinclair writes beautifully on occasion, his description of the Blue Water Shopping Centre is marvellous for instance, as are his descriptions of the area around Dartford. He has a short-sentence, modernist way of writing, sometimes very to the point, but its not suited to such a long book.
He has an obsession with burger bars, lunatic asylums and the Millennium Dome. The last is not interesting at all; it wasn’t that interesting at the time of the millennium and definitely not interesting now. The asylums apparently litter the M25. The Victorians had a predilection for dumping unwanted relatives in them, being a convenient distance from London. They are certainly tragic places, but he does go on and on. And I’m not that interested in what he ate for his breakfast either come to that. So it could have done with some drastic editing to reduce it by approximately half. Still, an interesting concept, I’ll think of him next time I’m driving past Staines.
Nonetheless the book is way too long. I got bored somewhere between the M4 and Leatherhead and I didn’t touch it for months. In fact I wouldn’t have finished it all if it hadn’t appeared transiently on the `1001 books list’ and that would have been a pity because it contains some real gems. Iain Sinclair writes beautifully on occasion, his description of the Blue Water Shopping Centre is marvellous for instance, as are his descriptions of the area around Dartford. He has a short-sentence, modernist way of writing, sometimes very to the point, but its not suited to such a long book.
He has an obsession with burger bars, lunatic asylums and the Millennium Dome. The last is not interesting at all; it wasn’t that interesting at the time of the millennium and definitely not interesting now. The asylums apparently litter the M25. The Victorians had a predilection for dumping unwanted relatives in them, being a convenient distance from London. They are certainly tragic places, but he does go on and on. And I’m not that interested in what he ate for his breakfast either come to that. So it could have done with some drastic editing to reduce it by approximately half. Still, an interesting concept, I’ll think of him next time I’m driving past Staines.
January 20, 2016
★★★★.5
The M25 is a roadway that circles around London and it is generally considered to be a road to nowhere. Sinclair decides that he will walk the M25 (or paths next to the M25) through various neighborhoods and passing abandoned buildings, closed mental institutions, polluted neighborhoods, beautiful gardens and estates, and much more. Multiple "characters" accompany the author as he makes the walk around the entire circuit.
This was a fascinating book for me but it is clearly not for everyone. Despite the fact that it took me months to finish this book, It's non-fiction and reads like a series of footnotes with some narrative thread loosely connecting the various threads. This typically is not the sort of book I would enjoy, but I tackled the book as a journey. I printed out maps of the M25 and surrounding neighborhoods and I read slowly looking up pictures of all the locations. I used to live in England up until age 12. We lived in Surrey and Sinclair described many towns I knew and I loved the amount of detail provided. Reading the book in this way over the course of months, made it an enjoyable and fascinating read. I think it will be a more enjoyable book for people who are either from London or have spent significant time in London and surrounding areas.
The best way for me to describe this book is to liken it to a museum guided tour where you go from one point to the next with a group of people and stop at various locations to learn a little about each destination point and while on the way you chat with your neighbors about a variety of topics. And the sheer number of literary references are fun to read.
The M25 is a roadway that circles around London and it is generally considered to be a road to nowhere. Sinclair decides that he will walk the M25 (or paths next to the M25) through various neighborhoods and passing abandoned buildings, closed mental institutions, polluted neighborhoods, beautiful gardens and estates, and much more. Multiple "characters" accompany the author as he makes the walk around the entire circuit.
This was a fascinating book for me but it is clearly not for everyone. Despite the fact that it took me months to finish this book, It's non-fiction and reads like a series of footnotes with some narrative thread loosely connecting the various threads. This typically is not the sort of book I would enjoy, but I tackled the book as a journey. I printed out maps of the M25 and surrounding neighborhoods and I read slowly looking up pictures of all the locations. I used to live in England up until age 12. We lived in Surrey and Sinclair described many towns I knew and I loved the amount of detail provided. Reading the book in this way over the course of months, made it an enjoyable and fascinating read. I think it will be a more enjoyable book for people who are either from London or have spent significant time in London and surrounding areas.
The best way for me to describe this book is to liken it to a museum guided tour where you go from one point to the next with a group of people and stop at various locations to learn a little about each destination point and while on the way you chat with your neighbors about a variety of topics. And the sheer number of literary references are fun to read.
September 16, 2013
I started this book 2 weeks ago. Ages ago. It felt like I was the one doing the walking on the M25 around London! And yet, I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Sinclair's British walkabout. I began with the intention that I was going to understand everything that was going on - I read the first two parts while sitting at the computer and looking at London and the M25 on Google maps, with extra windows open in Safari so I could check up on all the fast-flowing and random references that were being strewn about, but it just became too much. For the last three quarters of the book, I settled for living vicariously through Iain Sinclair's words, using my imagination to picture it, and cheering at the few tidbits of information I caught and waving like one of his dear asylum dwellers at the ones that flew over my head. It really was a fascinating book, but long and wordy and with the unfortunate tendency of putting me to sleep. Now that I'm finished I can say that it was a great experience, but one I'm unlikely to repeat in the future - unless I suddenly move to London or surrounding area and have an itch at hiking around it. Then I'll bring it along for ballast.
March 7, 2014
What a very odd book. The author decides to try and hike around the "London Oribtal," the road that rings London. He wanders around with a cast of varying back up characters, and takes random side trips both literally and figuratively into the history of the areas he walks through. There's a lot of talk about pictures taken along the way, but none are included.
I've read a lot of English books over the years, and I'm reasonably conversant with British slang. It wasn't enough. I have no idea what "asylum seekers" are, but apparently Mr. Sinclair is very concerned with them. He uses the phrase once per section at least, frequently more often.
The recurring theme, if there is one, seems to be how much of the English countryside and old ways of life urban sprawl has absorbed. That's a sad note, but reasonably accurate about everywhere I've been.
I can't really recommend the book. He sort of babbles at times. It was recommended to me as a classic, and I don't really see how it qualifies.
I've read a lot of English books over the years, and I'm reasonably conversant with British slang. It wasn't enough. I have no idea what "asylum seekers" are, but apparently Mr. Sinclair is very concerned with them. He uses the phrase once per section at least, frequently more often.
The recurring theme, if there is one, seems to be how much of the English countryside and old ways of life urban sprawl has absorbed. That's a sad note, but reasonably accurate about everywhere I've been.
I can't really recommend the book. He sort of babbles at times. It was recommended to me as a classic, and I don't really see how it qualifies.
May 29, 2009
I found this book maddening to begin with but fascinating by the end. It makes a coherent whole with strong central themes but I'm not sure if I was bludgeoned into submission by his repetition. His insistent conservatism can be overlooked. I stopped noticing that he never used one word (clause/sentence) when he could use three. I did make a mental note never to read any book(s) he may have written around 2003/2004 - the Dome/spin caused enough outrage and I can't imagine how much he'd have to vent about some of the really bad New Labour moves...
August 23, 2012
Thought I would put this one in as my favorite book of recent years. I cannot really rate this one higher. A total triumph of dense factual and opinionated writing packed full of theory and conjecture. Every page is packed with information that must have been backed up with research. It really fired up an an interest in psychogeography in me.
December 15, 2017
I have finally finished London Orbital.
Here are the things I liked about it... Iain Sinclair is a beautiful writer. I enjoyed his passages on the history and demise of the asylums dotted around the M25, his love of Samuel Palmer etc.
But Lord, this man is judgy. I thought I was the world champion of sweeping generalisations - but Iain Sinclair has me beaten hands down. I live in Dorking, so was interested to see what he would think of my area. I don't think he came into Dorking town on his walk - but did climb Box Hill. Sadly, Box Hill has put a cafe on top of itself (a servery, as he calls it...) which angers Iain Sinclair "my feeling is that anywhere with a 'servery' is to be avoided. If you want a shop, you should find a shop. Sainsbury's (Cobham) has a better servery than Box Hill".
To me - this does sum up Sinclair's attitude... Box Hill is packed with people, who come to picnic, cycle, walk and play. All kinds of people... People that look completely out of place at the top of Box Hill, but have made the effort to be there, rather than shopping in Bluewater... (another place Sinclair spews vitriol upon) - and I say reward them with a cup of tea from the servery.
Sinclair is so disparaging of Barratt housing estates (they are also not my taste) - but that doesn't make them bad places... in fact at the time of this books writing, they were an affordable option for many people. People who enjoy shopping at Bluewater or having a drink at the Harvester... People who are living perfectly content and full lives... I'm not sure what Sinclair thinks those people should be doing instead - but he certainly doesn't like the lifestyle they've chosen. (I get the feeling that if they all started becoming scholars of Samuel Palmer and Eric Gill, Sinclair would find a more obscure artist to love (can't have the same tastes as the masses...))
Other reviewers have suggested taking breaks during this book. I think this is very wise. Reading this book has put me off reading any other Iain Sinclair books, which is probably my loss... but 537 pages of culturally elite worthiness is just too much in one go.
Here are the things I liked about it... Iain Sinclair is a beautiful writer. I enjoyed his passages on the history and demise of the asylums dotted around the M25, his love of Samuel Palmer etc.
But Lord, this man is judgy. I thought I was the world champion of sweeping generalisations - but Iain Sinclair has me beaten hands down. I live in Dorking, so was interested to see what he would think of my area. I don't think he came into Dorking town on his walk - but did climb Box Hill. Sadly, Box Hill has put a cafe on top of itself (a servery, as he calls it...) which angers Iain Sinclair "my feeling is that anywhere with a 'servery' is to be avoided. If you want a shop, you should find a shop. Sainsbury's (Cobham) has a better servery than Box Hill".
To me - this does sum up Sinclair's attitude... Box Hill is packed with people, who come to picnic, cycle, walk and play. All kinds of people... People that look completely out of place at the top of Box Hill, but have made the effort to be there, rather than shopping in Bluewater... (another place Sinclair spews vitriol upon) - and I say reward them with a cup of tea from the servery.
Sinclair is so disparaging of Barratt housing estates (they are also not my taste) - but that doesn't make them bad places... in fact at the time of this books writing, they were an affordable option for many people. People who enjoy shopping at Bluewater or having a drink at the Harvester... People who are living perfectly content and full lives... I'm not sure what Sinclair thinks those people should be doing instead - but he certainly doesn't like the lifestyle they've chosen. (I get the feeling that if they all started becoming scholars of Samuel Palmer and Eric Gill, Sinclair would find a more obscure artist to love (can't have the same tastes as the masses...))
Other reviewers have suggested taking breaks during this book. I think this is very wise. Reading this book has put me off reading any other Iain Sinclair books, which is probably my loss... but 537 pages of culturally elite worthiness is just too much in one go.
January 14, 2023
One of my top reading experiences of the past few years! Nonfiction, though not quite reportorial, it is considered "psychogeography", not a genre I could previously have told you much about, but if Michael Moorcock and Will Self are among its representatives, I'm all in.
Sinclair, with a rotating cast of friends, outlines a plan to walk the London Orbital, a ring road of over 100 miles that circles London (Greater London might be the right term, since the dazzling range of towns and neighborhoods it encompasses is part of the appeal). The walk is spread out over a year of day trips, so it is not some sort of endurance test. They make some rules for themselves - how far they can get from the road, even though it may be duller than some tangents. In the course of the walks (his companions are all experts in various fields), a wealth of detail is recounted about the contemporary people and places, but also the history of each location, with an emphasis on the esoteric and mystical (ley lines and so on).
The itinerary necessarily doesn't include most of the central places in London where I have been, so it is all quite new and fascinating - made me feel like my knowledge of London is as limited as a visitor to New York who has only been to Manhattan.
Sinclair, with a rotating cast of friends, outlines a plan to walk the London Orbital, a ring road of over 100 miles that circles London (Greater London might be the right term, since the dazzling range of towns and neighborhoods it encompasses is part of the appeal). The walk is spread out over a year of day trips, so it is not some sort of endurance test. They make some rules for themselves - how far they can get from the road, even though it may be duller than some tangents. In the course of the walks (his companions are all experts in various fields), a wealth of detail is recounted about the contemporary people and places, but also the history of each location, with an emphasis on the esoteric and mystical (ley lines and so on).
The itinerary necessarily doesn't include most of the central places in London where I have been, so it is all quite new and fascinating - made me feel like my knowledge of London is as limited as a visitor to New York who has only been to Manhattan.
September 9, 2014
Really not my cup of tea. The idea is interesting - walking round the M25 - but the way the book is written, you need doctorates in about eight different subjects to understand all his allusions and literary references.
January 9, 2021
Really strange book, Sinclairs style is so chaotic I found it hard to really grasp what he was talking about before he began rambling about something else. If you don’t know London this book would be awful - knowing London, the book is just okay.
Want to read
August 3, 2007It didn't take long for me to realize that this would be an overwhelmingly hard read for me, or really anyone outside of London or Britian.
I gave up.
I gave up.
Read
December 3, 2021An ur-text of contemporary psychogeography. It took me a while to get through (over two years, in fact) and I ended up finishing it via the audiobook, which is read by Sinclair. Not a bad way to experience it. Sinclair writes in his usual register: poetic stream-of-consciousness, stacking up imagery and metaphor for its culmulative effect. At the end of each chapter, I felt as if I had walked that stretch of the M25 with him. Perhaps this explains why I needed plenty of breaks to recuperate.
Yes, it has all the often-repeated psychogeography cliches (e.g. the hyper-literate, detached observer’s stance), but it's rarely dour and has lots of dry humour (e.g. an encounter with a pub ‘offering specials such as: No Food - Refurbishment’). Some of the best moments are when Sinclair documents the encroachment of unrestrained capitalism and consumerism on sites of obscure cultural interest. Twenty or so years later and this situation feels more dire than ever.
Yes, it has all the often-repeated psychogeography cliches (e.g. the hyper-literate, detached observer’s stance), but it's rarely dour and has lots of dry humour (e.g. an encounter with a pub ‘offering specials such as: No Food - Refurbishment’). Some of the best moments are when Sinclair documents the encroachment of unrestrained capitalism and consumerism on sites of obscure cultural interest. Twenty or so years later and this situation feels more dire than ever.
Read
October 27, 2025The crazed, psychosis- inducing M25 tells one a lot more about the state of modern Britain than you'd expect.
May 7, 2025
By far the most unique prose I've ever read - at times incredibly enjoyable, at other times slightly grating...
March 3, 2021
Why use one word when you can use 10 sentences and slip a couple of incredibly obscure literary references in at the same time? This was a very difficult read about a subject that should've been interesting. It's put me off anything else that Sinclair has even been near.
March 25, 2024
Reading London Orbital felt more like a long-term project. If Ian Sinclair wanted to convey the sense of a 150+miles trudge around a noisy, muddy, gritty motorway, he certainly succeeded at that.
The book was introduced to me by someone abroad – I still do not believe they read it to the end, with their one being a translated copy and without personal experience of any of the places explored.
First, I accessed parts of London Orbital’s on audiobook– I say ‘parts’ because Sinclair’s own, monotone reading, just before bed, invariably sent me to sleep and I could not always remember where I left off. Eventually, I bought a used, but tellingly pristine, paperback copy. And so the ‘project’ began: page after page, step after step, constantly interrupting my read to consult maps, to check and research references on Google, to visit places in person and walk some of the most accessible sections.
I sometimes felt very close to Sinclair and his companions. I often wished to stumble upon the group, while out on my own walks. I enjoyed recognising places I already knew well, including where I live, and especially discovering new secrets and journeys. The biggest, twisted pleasure was the pain of being forced to put the book aside, to try and make sense of what Sinclair was actually talking about, then go back to it with renewed stamina and gratefulness. I can only describe that as a ‘process’: snap the book shut in frustration, curse Sinclair’s exclusive erudition, refuse to indulge his cryptic three-word descriptions - while loving them at the same time- then, threaten to move on to a lighter read. As if he would care! Finally, meekly, go back to the homework…
I cannot claim understanding half of what I read. The language is far too experimental for the casual reader that I am. The literary and historical references way too obscure for my average, general knowledge. Still, Sinclair is a fellow Londoner, a neighbour of sorts, someone I might come across at the corner shop unawares, a 'local writer'. That helps to dispel most of the occasional resentment.
For now, I ‘got’ what I could out of London Orbital, not least a new, welcome awareness of lesser known writers and works I plan to explore further. Shelved under ‘great books to read again in 10 years’.
The book was introduced to me by someone abroad – I still do not believe they read it to the end, with their one being a translated copy and without personal experience of any of the places explored.
First, I accessed parts of London Orbital’s on audiobook– I say ‘parts’ because Sinclair’s own, monotone reading, just before bed, invariably sent me to sleep and I could not always remember where I left off. Eventually, I bought a used, but tellingly pristine, paperback copy. And so the ‘project’ began: page after page, step after step, constantly interrupting my read to consult maps, to check and research references on Google, to visit places in person and walk some of the most accessible sections.
I sometimes felt very close to Sinclair and his companions. I often wished to stumble upon the group, while out on my own walks. I enjoyed recognising places I already knew well, including where I live, and especially discovering new secrets and journeys. The biggest, twisted pleasure was the pain of being forced to put the book aside, to try and make sense of what Sinclair was actually talking about, then go back to it with renewed stamina and gratefulness. I can only describe that as a ‘process’: snap the book shut in frustration, curse Sinclair’s exclusive erudition, refuse to indulge his cryptic three-word descriptions - while loving them at the same time- then, threaten to move on to a lighter read. As if he would care! Finally, meekly, go back to the homework…
I cannot claim understanding half of what I read. The language is far too experimental for the casual reader that I am. The literary and historical references way too obscure for my average, general knowledge. Still, Sinclair is a fellow Londoner, a neighbour of sorts, someone I might come across at the corner shop unawares, a 'local writer'. That helps to dispel most of the occasional resentment.
For now, I ‘got’ what I could out of London Orbital, not least a new, welcome awareness of lesser known writers and works I plan to explore further. Shelved under ‘great books to read again in 10 years’.
April 23, 2008
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair is an interesting counterpoint to Mrs. P's Journey by Sarah Hartley. It is part map and part memoir of the outer fringes of London where the M25 makes its 125 mile (give or take) loop around the city.
Sinclair's walk in the late 1990s was inspired by his hatred for the Millennium dome. Walking and mapping the areas around the M25 became a way to cleanse the palette. He broke the walk up into seven parts, working anticlockwise around the fringes of the highway.
I enjoyed the first half of the book but as he came around the back half of his travels it became more of the same. Six hundred pages was just more time than I wanted to spend touring along the edge of the M25. The book could have been shorter with fewer asides and tangents.
I think that readers more familiar with the area will find the book more interesting. Likewise, I don't know that a Londoner who had never been to East Bay would find Castro Valley all that interesting either. While it wasn't among my favorite nonfiction books I've read so far this year, I did learn a few things. I recommend this book to readers familiar with London. Readers who aren't should take the book slowly and have a map handy.
Sinclair's walk in the late 1990s was inspired by his hatred for the Millennium dome. Walking and mapping the areas around the M25 became a way to cleanse the palette. He broke the walk up into seven parts, working anticlockwise around the fringes of the highway.
I enjoyed the first half of the book but as he came around the back half of his travels it became more of the same. Six hundred pages was just more time than I wanted to spend touring along the edge of the M25. The book could have been shorter with fewer asides and tangents.
I think that readers more familiar with the area will find the book more interesting. Likewise, I don't know that a Londoner who had never been to East Bay would find Castro Valley all that interesting either. While it wasn't among my favorite nonfiction books I've read so far this year, I did learn a few things. I recommend this book to readers familiar with London. Readers who aren't should take the book slowly and have a map handy.
August 30, 2016
The M25, London's Orbital Motorway, the Road to Hell, Europe's biggest car park is given a forensic dissection in Sinclair's exhausting journey. Or rather it isn't: it remains as the undertone of traffic hum in the background, while Sinclair explores on foot its borders and verges, searching for God-knows-what. Some essence of place, some marker in time to explain the Millennial neuroses. Short sentences. Psycho-geography. Images of churches, wanderers. The lost, the insane, the impulsive walkers, compulsive talkers, the halt and lame. Retail asylums, waste disposal, getaways, breakaways and get-aways. This is London, but the fringes of society, the wastelands and reclamation. Regeneration and Blairite whitewashing. Entertaining or disturbing?
March 5, 2020
The podcast, Death is Just Around the Corner, has been informing my book choices lately. Without it, I doubt I'd have ever stumbled across Iain Sinclair. This book will bore to tears the wrong readers. I could only tackle it a chapter at a time. It covers Sinclair's walk around the M25 (orbital highway surrounding London) but the narrative might dip into anything at any moment and information and annecdotes overlap each other seamlessly in an impressive feat of prose that leaves the reader in a trance. More than once, I found myself completely engrossed in the reading only to put the book down and for it all to disolve before my grasp. There is no way to retain all the information provided, but that's not the point. Read it; lose yourself in it.
February 9, 2013
I'm reading it again - on the principle that one should bend to the anti-clockwise centripetal force and exorcise both the putrifying scab of the malapropic Dome (O2, Greenwich Arena, future Heritage Centre) and the appalling corporate, Companion of Honour winning rave on Hackney Marshes. That's 249 miles of tarmac and concrete, double that along the disappearing rights of way, grass-tussocked canal paths, sign-cluttered Heritage bridleways and toxic fields .... over 1000 pages of tight, lexically fecund, idea burdened paragraphs you have to read again and again ... and again; hours of furious note-taking for use in blogs or envious common rooms ....
September 29, 2017
The page-turning locomotive of Sinclair's book is a distinctive fusion of prose and poetry. Though you will doubtless be left stranded at some point by the microscopically close focus of the author's obsessions, the trick is to hang on tight and allow the text's centripetal forces yank you back on track. The body of knowledge over which Sinclair exercises a critical opinion is truly awe-inspiring, and promises much for successive readings. Excellent value for money.
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