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Liquid City
The eccentric, manic, often moving collaborative explorations of London's hidden streets, cemeteries, parks and canals by photographer Marc Atkins and writer Iain Sinclair were first recorded in Sinclair's highly acclaimed 1997 book Lights Out for the Territory , praised in the Guardian as "one of the most remarkable books ever written on London". Liquid City documents Atkins and Sinclair's further peregrinations, focusing on the city's eastern and south-eastern quadrants. An array of famous and lesser-known writers, booksellers and film-makers slip in and out of Sinclair's annotations, as do memories and remnants of the East End's criminal mobs. The title Liquid City is meant to evoke the Thames, which flows silently through the photographic and textual narrative, and to suggest the changes London has undergone and, like all cities, is constantly undergoing.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1999
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About the author
Iain Sinclair
120 books343 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
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July 4, 2016The other day, I was talking to a friend about how I'd lost patience with Iain Sinclair, his "ever-decreasing circles and ever-increasing grump". So of course, that evening I saw the library had a new one of his in, and borrowed it. But it's a new edition of an oldie I've not read, and it turns out half of my complaint was exactly wrong. This is the Sinclair I like: moving in his own eccentric circles where a resemblance to Derek Raymond is the sort of thing on which people will often remark, surrounded by his familiar characters (Driffield, Moore, Marc Atkins himself), lurking in the shadows on the edge of town (except that in London they're right at the heart of the old town). Yes, it was great that he came out into the light to decry the devastation visited on this strange old London as the money flooded in...but the longer he stays out on the public stage, the more that magical Sinclair-ness departs him, the less he looks distinct from all the other old men saying it wasn't like this in their day. Hopefully there remain enough of these shadows for him to sink into again, recharging in the numinous monochrome London caught to perfection in Atkins' photographs.
July 31, 2011
A syncretic sweep of the ghostly and mordant. there is a necessity in Sinclair's memory, however flawed and decayed such has become. I type this as Dale Peck is speaking on tv from the PEN Conference. There is a grim irony I adn't anticipated.
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July 15, 2010An odd one, but a curious read...
August 18, 2020
Purchase Liquid City here for just $12!
London as seen from its veins – a winding, eclectic narrative that threads together the city’s secret tributaries, historic side-streets, the parks and cemeteries and forgotten ghosts. For anyone who loves a cultural history with a more esoteric bent. Gorgeously told, with stunning photographs.
Steph - The Book Grocer
London as seen from its veins – a winding, eclectic narrative that threads together the city’s secret tributaries, historic side-streets, the parks and cemeteries and forgotten ghosts. For anyone who loves a cultural history with a more esoteric bent. Gorgeously told, with stunning photographs.
Steph - The Book Grocer
June 20, 2021
What was that all about? A lost London? Probably.. Disturbing? Only if you sneek a peek through the curtains.. The Carpenters Arms with no apostrophe? Local waterhole for social misfits.. John Healy? Now there's a story.. A wonderful mesmerising meander by a curious Sinclair with the able-bodied Atkins working the shutter.. thanks for the off-road excursion, loved it
June 9, 2008
Sinclair in a small dose, and a rare rave about photography as well as Sinclair's London.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews