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The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City
London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed.
Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.
Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.
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First published September 7, 2017
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About the author
Iain Sinclair
120 books342 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 51 reviews
gave-up-on-it
July 26, 2021 I really wanted to love, love, love this book since London is one of my favorite cities but I just could not appreciate the author's writing style. I stuck with it for a while in an attempt to get used to it but I lost my battle. This book has gotten some excellent reviews, so I am in the minority. Oh well, what you like is what you like and choices are subjective. But I am sad that I just couldn't finish it.
October 13, 2019
The stucco terraces, spurned by Ballard as a diseased pathology, are hollow, bereft of the communal ripple of swinish dreams that followed us through North London.
There is a slow burn of poetic vision, political resignation and the heaving convulsions of crotchety aging. The sections on Blake and the Norman Conquest are astonishing, the details on cyclists and umbrellas are risible and only occasionally alarming. There is point where Sinclair is saying, what the hell is wrong with you people? I find that fascinating but lack the temerity to address conditions on my own.
Ultimately I found this a meditation on London amidst Brexit and Boris as an upscale cruise liner, removed from the rest of the nation and home to a money laundering playground for oligarchs, tourists and criminals. The anonymous preterite maintain the comforts while the proles subsist on reality tv and budget menu carcinogen.
There is a slow burn of poetic vision, political resignation and the heaving convulsions of crotchety aging. The sections on Blake and the Norman Conquest are astonishing, the details on cyclists and umbrellas are risible and only occasionally alarming. There is point where Sinclair is saying, what the hell is wrong with you people? I find that fascinating but lack the temerity to address conditions on my own.
Ultimately I found this a meditation on London amidst Brexit and Boris as an upscale cruise liner, removed from the rest of the nation and home to a money laundering playground for oligarchs, tourists and criminals. The anonymous preterite maintain the comforts while the proles subsist on reality tv and budget menu carcinogen.
March 22, 2021
The destruction of London is an unsettlingly familiar trope. There is something which seems to deeply satisfy authors and readers alike in the toppling of seemingly infallible towers or a surging tide along the sinuous Thames. While it's title is similarly apocalyptic The Last London doesn't describe a literal ending - but suggests a city which has reached its final condition. It is an ending though in another sense - the final work in a cycle of of semi-fictional novels and essays which have tumbled out of Hackney since 1975. Taken together these books form a remarkable cultural catalogue which documents the sometimes jarring changes which have wracked the city as it shudders into the 21st Century. London often feels briskly futuristic on its face, but in truth it always lags behind. Things change disarmingly slowly in a city of this impossible size and complexity, and it takes a sharp jolt to propel London forward. Sinclair posits the 2012 Olympiad as the moment things change. The moment which London enters its final phase. The moment at which he starts to step away from the city, their paths forking in distinctly different directions. The Last London draws the themes which have emerged in his work since 2012 to a spectacularly written conclusion.
It also marks a distinct shift in Sinclair's writing style which brings his exasperation to the fore, electrifying and spiking his prose and rendering it curiously similar to some of his earliest poetic works on London. I've seen reviews which bridle at this frustration and disquiet - but I think in a literary career which has spanned well over forty years and countless revolutions in the experience of navigating London, Sinclair has earned a hearing. The irritations which he catalogues as he moves around the rapidly evolving city are individually innocuous but collectively deafening. The flow of digital information along unmediated channels challenges the well-walked paths and mysterious connections which Sinclair has meticulously mapped and remapped. These old ways are clogged with cyclists who have no time to avoid pedestrians now. The sense that devices demand maintenance and drain agency from the people moving around the city's boroughs seems a minor inconvenience to the rest of us until we're facing down a crowd coming the wrong way, heads down, minds elsewhere. It's easy to dismiss the exasperated tone which some passages in the book take as the snarls of a man aging at a different rate to the city - but almost all of them have rung true at some point, even to a relative technophile like me.
The Last London begins in Hackney with a sage-like silent man on a bench in Haggerston Park, and slowly expands to the limits of the London which Sinclair has written himself into, and now out of. The journeys this time though are partially an act of erasure - undoing his London Oveground circuit by reversing its direction, revisiting the docks and dereliction of Downriver after the passing of 'The Witch' and finally venturing into the stage-managed artificiality of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park left behind by the Grand Project. By the time the circuit is completed, the mysterious presence has gone from the park. Things are changing again, London is being remade in the image of Beijing or Bahrain. Legacy and Inclusivity - once the bywords of the Olympic city - are now virtual concepts which rarely make the leap into reality from the computer generated vistas which wrap new developments.
As the book approaches its conclusion, Sinclair is on the hoof again in pursuit of the next London, if indeed it exists. His walk from Gospel Oak to Barking in the company of (literally) ghostwritten friends who have gone, charts the path of the partially-electrified railway which will eventually spark life into the provisional community rising from the sedge and mud at Barking Riverside. There is a point on the journey where his narrative splinters - the narrator is no longer the walker as he pushes over boundaries and into sectors of the suburbs which are outside his experience. It's strange, and liberating as a long-time reader of Sinclair, to feel the author's raw response to the strangeness of this hinterland. He crosses the North Circular into Barking and recognises the kind of territory he used to occupy pushed out here to the margins, and soon to be pushed back further. He is spun back to Hackney in relief - that he has left Barking, or that places like Barking still exist?
The series of walks which are described in the final chapters of The Last London have another function - they detail those who will continue to walk and record. John Rogers, Andrew Kötting, Effie Paleologou - in words, film and images they have already long since taken up Sinclair's mantle. They walk beside him, and they'll carry on walking into their own Londons and beyond. Their work is generously referenced, openly admired. Their activism and vigour a match for the demands of the Last London - their variations on Sinclair's themes spinning off into new territory, new media, new technology, but always anchored into a shared past. Thinking of the influence of Sinclair's now extensive body of London writing, I wince a little on reading my own over-egged thoughts here and see an homage to Sinclair in every description of a decommissioned facility or deleted franchise. The companions on these final walks are commended to us by Sinclair, not least for his appreciation of their ability to navigate the city in its current situation. They are doing what he can't now, receiving messages which are incompatible with his self-confessed duncephone. The book closes with a final pilgrimage - an account of the march from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards on Sea which morphed into Kötting's Edith Walks film - once again piercing the skin of the M25, out into the fractious hinterlands where 'Vote Leave' signs line the lanes. Out of the city, out of the UK, out of Europe. The uncertainty of the future weighs heavily on Sinclair, and he almost pines for the easier times under Thatcher when the needle on the national moral compass was inverted rather than spinning erratically. A time when satire didn't turn eagerly into newsprint with each dumb tweet from Donald Trump. It's down to these new walkers to make sense of the next London in a post-factual, digitally altered world. It would be a gloomy way to pass out of the city if it wasn't written with such vigour and precision - Sinclair is playfully pithy to the bitter end of his walk, enjoying the freedom perhaps of looking back on London?
The Last London is as ever an erudite, complex work which will have readers reaching for references and chasing down works by Sinclair's kindred spirits. It's not an easy read, but it rewards time and effort to untangle the threads of myth and modernism which wind around his map of the city, reaching out to his coastal redoubt. While it refers deeply into Sinclair's history of writing on London, it stands alone as a guidebook to future cities which exist everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps it also sounds a call to the next generation of pavement botherers, mythmakers and diviners of this ancient, ever-changing city. If they turn in an account half as vital and detailed as this, there is an interesting future in the written city.
It also marks a distinct shift in Sinclair's writing style which brings his exasperation to the fore, electrifying and spiking his prose and rendering it curiously similar to some of his earliest poetic works on London. I've seen reviews which bridle at this frustration and disquiet - but I think in a literary career which has spanned well over forty years and countless revolutions in the experience of navigating London, Sinclair has earned a hearing. The irritations which he catalogues as he moves around the rapidly evolving city are individually innocuous but collectively deafening. The flow of digital information along unmediated channels challenges the well-walked paths and mysterious connections which Sinclair has meticulously mapped and remapped. These old ways are clogged with cyclists who have no time to avoid pedestrians now. The sense that devices demand maintenance and drain agency from the people moving around the city's boroughs seems a minor inconvenience to the rest of us until we're facing down a crowd coming the wrong way, heads down, minds elsewhere. It's easy to dismiss the exasperated tone which some passages in the book take as the snarls of a man aging at a different rate to the city - but almost all of them have rung true at some point, even to a relative technophile like me.
The Last London begins in Hackney with a sage-like silent man on a bench in Haggerston Park, and slowly expands to the limits of the London which Sinclair has written himself into, and now out of. The journeys this time though are partially an act of erasure - undoing his London Oveground circuit by reversing its direction, revisiting the docks and dereliction of Downriver after the passing of 'The Witch' and finally venturing into the stage-managed artificiality of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park left behind by the Grand Project. By the time the circuit is completed, the mysterious presence has gone from the park. Things are changing again, London is being remade in the image of Beijing or Bahrain. Legacy and Inclusivity - once the bywords of the Olympic city - are now virtual concepts which rarely make the leap into reality from the computer generated vistas which wrap new developments.
As the book approaches its conclusion, Sinclair is on the hoof again in pursuit of the next London, if indeed it exists. His walk from Gospel Oak to Barking in the company of (literally) ghostwritten friends who have gone, charts the path of the partially-electrified railway which will eventually spark life into the provisional community rising from the sedge and mud at Barking Riverside. There is a point on the journey where his narrative splinters - the narrator is no longer the walker as he pushes over boundaries and into sectors of the suburbs which are outside his experience. It's strange, and liberating as a long-time reader of Sinclair, to feel the author's raw response to the strangeness of this hinterland. He crosses the North Circular into Barking and recognises the kind of territory he used to occupy pushed out here to the margins, and soon to be pushed back further. He is spun back to Hackney in relief - that he has left Barking, or that places like Barking still exist?
The series of walks which are described in the final chapters of The Last London have another function - they detail those who will continue to walk and record. John Rogers, Andrew Kötting, Effie Paleologou - in words, film and images they have already long since taken up Sinclair's mantle. They walk beside him, and they'll carry on walking into their own Londons and beyond. Their work is generously referenced, openly admired. Their activism and vigour a match for the demands of the Last London - their variations on Sinclair's themes spinning off into new territory, new media, new technology, but always anchored into a shared past. Thinking of the influence of Sinclair's now extensive body of London writing, I wince a little on reading my own over-egged thoughts here and see an homage to Sinclair in every description of a decommissioned facility or deleted franchise. The companions on these final walks are commended to us by Sinclair, not least for his appreciation of their ability to navigate the city in its current situation. They are doing what he can't now, receiving messages which are incompatible with his self-confessed duncephone. The book closes with a final pilgrimage - an account of the march from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards on Sea which morphed into Kötting's Edith Walks film - once again piercing the skin of the M25, out into the fractious hinterlands where 'Vote Leave' signs line the lanes. Out of the city, out of the UK, out of Europe. The uncertainty of the future weighs heavily on Sinclair, and he almost pines for the easier times under Thatcher when the needle on the national moral compass was inverted rather than spinning erratically. A time when satire didn't turn eagerly into newsprint with each dumb tweet from Donald Trump. It's down to these new walkers to make sense of the next London in a post-factual, digitally altered world. It would be a gloomy way to pass out of the city if it wasn't written with such vigour and precision - Sinclair is playfully pithy to the bitter end of his walk, enjoying the freedom perhaps of looking back on London?
The Last London is as ever an erudite, complex work which will have readers reaching for references and chasing down works by Sinclair's kindred spirits. It's not an easy read, but it rewards time and effort to untangle the threads of myth and modernism which wind around his map of the city, reaching out to his coastal redoubt. While it refers deeply into Sinclair's history of writing on London, it stands alone as a guidebook to future cities which exist everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps it also sounds a call to the next generation of pavement botherers, mythmakers and diviners of this ancient, ever-changing city. If they turn in an account half as vital and detailed as this, there is an interesting future in the written city.
abbandonato
December 16, 2018Non ce la posso fa':
Un clochard su una panchina: Una guaina profilattica verde [un parka, N.d.M.], così verde che è quasi nera, avvolge la nudità impensabile di quest’uomo. Ascolta. Un respiro come un sibilo di foratura mulina solcando l’erba spolverata di margherite. Il suo cuore rallenta fino quasi a fermarsi, assorbito nel pulsare del luogo. E nel nostro, mentre lo guardiamo furtivi. Il Buddha Vegetativo àncora la città, con l’arco della schiena agganciato alla panchina nervata.
[...]
il parco Hackerstone che si dissove in stoned hackers, informatici drogati. Come quelli che lo attraversano a piedi, di fretta, passo lungo, all’inseguimento, convinti che ci sia una versione migliorata e riveduta del mondo da trasfondere attraverso la tavoletta che gli pulsa in mano. Sono legati a questi filatteri digitali, li portano ovunque ad annunciare una fede irrazionale in sistemi digitali pericolosamente corrotti.
[...]
Il muro di cinta di Haggerston sostiene e permea chi sceglie di venire qui a lavorare, fare esercizio o sedersi. Inocula la sua mitologia. Il microclima è un beverone inebriante, una droga che dà beatitudine.
[...]
e la pustola non scoppiata del sole velato che muore oltre le finestre sporche.
[...]
Munster square: Ora c’era un’attrazione magnetica tra stazione e parco, tra le sfarzose case bianche magnificate dai romanzi di Elizabeth Bowen e i tetri prati verdi e le soglie di casa unte illuminati da flashback con cocci di bottiglia alla The Grass Arena di John Healy. Vagabondi di una stanchezza purgatoriale stravaccati dentro conche tollerate, tra stazione e traffico. Gli hotel per ospiti di passaggio, dai nomi sospettosamente pastorali, pulsavano di congiunzioni tetre e illecite. [...]Pareti di vetro a dominare l’azione in una geometria vorticista di predominio conteso.
No, non ce la posso fa'!
Un clochard su una panchina: Una guaina profilattica verde [un parka, N.d.M.], così verde che è quasi nera, avvolge la nudità impensabile di quest’uomo. Ascolta. Un respiro come un sibilo di foratura mulina solcando l’erba spolverata di margherite. Il suo cuore rallenta fino quasi a fermarsi, assorbito nel pulsare del luogo. E nel nostro, mentre lo guardiamo furtivi. Il Buddha Vegetativo àncora la città, con l’arco della schiena agganciato alla panchina nervata.
[...]
il parco Hackerstone che si dissove in stoned hackers, informatici drogati. Come quelli che lo attraversano a piedi, di fretta, passo lungo, all’inseguimento, convinti che ci sia una versione migliorata e riveduta del mondo da trasfondere attraverso la tavoletta che gli pulsa in mano. Sono legati a questi filatteri digitali, li portano ovunque ad annunciare una fede irrazionale in sistemi digitali pericolosamente corrotti.
[...]
Il muro di cinta di Haggerston sostiene e permea chi sceglie di venire qui a lavorare, fare esercizio o sedersi. Inocula la sua mitologia. Il microclima è un beverone inebriante, una droga che dà beatitudine.
[...]
e la pustola non scoppiata del sole velato che muore oltre le finestre sporche.
[...]
Munster square: Ora c’era un’attrazione magnetica tra stazione e parco, tra le sfarzose case bianche magnificate dai romanzi di Elizabeth Bowen e i tetri prati verdi e le soglie di casa unte illuminati da flashback con cocci di bottiglia alla The Grass Arena di John Healy. Vagabondi di una stanchezza purgatoriale stravaccati dentro conche tollerate, tra stazione e traffico. Gli hotel per ospiti di passaggio, dai nomi sospettosamente pastorali, pulsavano di congiunzioni tetre e illecite. [...]Pareti di vetro a dominare l’azione in una geometria vorticista di predominio conteso.
No, non ce la posso fa'!
Read
July 1, 2020Iain Sinclair's dreamy prose, applied ot the London of Boris bikes, dizzying rents, poor doors, and post-Grenfell, post-Brexit malaise. The tone is needless to say bleaker than the delirium of Sinclair's earlier work, but at the same time it is by necessity more mature, even if that maturity is the result of the text being something of a eulogy for a city – the Hackney of Lights Out for the Territory and the Hackney of The Last London ain't got much to say to one another. The result is a text that isn't the sheer joy of earlier Sinclair, but something odd, melancholy, very well-written, and potentially important – although I'm not British enough to say so.
July 14, 2019
Although I did at times enjoy this book, it was largely a disappointment for me. The biggest disappointment revolves around the fact that it mostly takes place in a small section of London (Hackney) or outside of the city entirely. This despite the fact the jacket led me to believe it encompassed a wider area of the city itself. The second gripe with this book was the authors neverending gripe with the city (or surrounding towns as the case may be). He was so incredibly negative, that reading it became an exercise in depression. Some of the things he rants about (bicyclists, new construction, cell phones) are indeed frustrating aspects of modern urban living. But he rarely ever mentions the positive aspects (such as bicycles being environmentally friendly), only the negative. On more than a few occasions, I asked myself "why the #*&% do you live in London if you hate it so much?"
I do admit that this is the first time I'd read a book written in the style of Mr. Sinclair. Sort of a poetic polemic. It is therefore possible that I'd need to warm up to the style before I could fully appreciate it. And although I did at times enjoy his writing, I more often than not found it forced and drowning in its own artsy prose.
There were some comical points and some really good observations, but it was largely an ugly rant that left me bothered. And another little tidbit I found entertaining was his days long walk with a group of musicians who were re-enacting a march of centuries past when the English fought the Vikings. It was supposed to come across as a walk with some eccentric artists, but the authore either failed to realize (or failed to tell us) that one of the eccentrics was from the Pogues, a pretty famous Irish Folk Punk band out of London circa early 80's. Despite my love of the Pogues, that reinforced my sense that much of the book as well as his stories from the past dealt with well-to-do white folks he tries to pass off as destitute artists or eccentric semi lunatics too edgy for modern society.
I do admit that this is the first time I'd read a book written in the style of Mr. Sinclair. Sort of a poetic polemic. It is therefore possible that I'd need to warm up to the style before I could fully appreciate it. And although I did at times enjoy his writing, I more often than not found it forced and drowning in its own artsy prose.
There were some comical points and some really good observations, but it was largely an ugly rant that left me bothered. And another little tidbit I found entertaining was his days long walk with a group of musicians who were re-enacting a march of centuries past when the English fought the Vikings. It was supposed to come across as a walk with some eccentric artists, but the authore either failed to realize (or failed to tell us) that one of the eccentrics was from the Pogues, a pretty famous Irish Folk Punk band out of London circa early 80's. Despite my love of the Pogues, that reinforced my sense that much of the book as well as his stories from the past dealt with well-to-do white folks he tries to pass off as destitute artists or eccentric semi lunatics too edgy for modern society.
April 9, 2018
I thought this would be more of a travelogue, ie. something for London like what _Berlin Now: The City After the Wall _ by Peter Schneider was for Berlin. But it turns out to be more of a sociological survey combined with many, many asides relating to poetry, philosophy and a wealth of other topics.
There's interesting information in the book, but I often found the narrative hard to follow because of the great numbers of asides. At one point, he's describing a dog being tormented by its owner. It's struggling to stay afloat in a canal the author is walking along, but every time the dog gets close enough to shore to climb out, the owner nudges it back out into the water again. At that point, he shifts off into 2-3 side topics, and he never returns to what is happening with the dog or why. Or maybe by the time he did, I had shifted off to another chapter out of boredom or confusion.
I think the book might be suitable reading for someone who lives in London or who knows the city well and is interested more generally in random goings on here and there in the city. But you'd have to be willing to tolerate all sorts of diversions into subjects far afield from London.
There's interesting information in the book, but I often found the narrative hard to follow because of the great numbers of asides. At one point, he's describing a dog being tormented by its owner. It's struggling to stay afloat in a canal the author is walking along, but every time the dog gets close enough to shore to climb out, the owner nudges it back out into the water again. At that point, he shifts off into 2-3 side topics, and he never returns to what is happening with the dog or why. Or maybe by the time he did, I had shifted off to another chapter out of boredom or confusion.
I think the book might be suitable reading for someone who lives in London or who knows the city well and is interested more generally in random goings on here and there in the city. But you'd have to be willing to tolerate all sorts of diversions into subjects far afield from London.
September 26, 2017
You can read my review of The Last London here:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-e...
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-e...
October 25, 2017
“The capital had become an illuminated cruise ship, a floating casino for oligarchs, oil sheiks and multinational money-launderers; a vessel, holed at the waterline, staffed by invisibles on zero-hour contacts, collateral damage of war and famine and prurient news reports, huddled in lifeboats.”
In many ways Sinclair is London’s biggest critic and its loudest fan. He can find beauty where others find poverty, and can see the ugliness behind the beauty. Without doubt his semi-poetic, semi-rambling style is not for everyone. At times it’s hard to know what is profound masking as superficial, and the other way round. Initially some of the tangents serve only to confuse, and many of the off roads lead only to dead ends, but it soon warms up, as he finds his feet, and as ever there is much of interest in Sinclair’s London. It won’t always make sense, it tests you and he can make you work for it, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Brexit, Trump, gangsters, the London bike programme, the Shard, WG Sebald, The Mole Man, a murdered soap actress, an obscure book from 1935, Haggerston Park, Haggerston Baths, as well as an ever shifting, supporting cast of artists, poets and writers, are all pieced together here to make up a colourful and eventful jigsaw of a journey. The sheer depth of social history and his vast knowledge and insight can make for quite a treat. He captures the chatter and babble of the everyday too, squeezing the marrow out of the minutiae with some really authentic results.
Sinclair is mourning for a London that is slowly fading, but then London and the idea of it can never be a static thing, or else it would cease to be, and in there lies the beauty of it, the fragility and ephemerality of it, and it’s this that he tries to grasp. As ever it’s often during the digressions and diversions where the real wonders and excitement is unearthed.
For anyone looking for some more original insights into the many other hidden aspects of contemporary London, I would highly recommend these recent works, Bradley L Garrett’s, “Subterranean London”, Shove & Potter’s, “Banksy: You Are An Acceptable Level of Threat”, Ben Judah’s, “This Is London” and Rowan Moore’s, “Slow Burn City”. All of these books really look at the capital in a number of refreshing ways.
February 17, 2021
There is no writer quite like Iain Sinclair and his writing on London is unique and fascinating.
He can extract the profound from the seemingly mundane. Must note though, that I had a couple of -sigh eye roll -moments when he made remarks on how 'no-one stopped and said anything to us' or 'nobody would answer my questions' whilst exploring the city in various ways that I thought, oh come on Iain. Recognize your urban experience to be very different from lets say mine. If I saw two men underneath a dark London railway arch with sticks doing something, would I as a lone woman risk stopping and talking to them? I'm not some saddo enveloped in their iPhone missing the interests of the urban landscape. I'm trying to avoid attack.
He can extract the profound from the seemingly mundane. Must note though, that I had a couple of -sigh eye roll -moments when he made remarks on how 'no-one stopped and said anything to us' or 'nobody would answer my questions' whilst exploring the city in various ways that I thought, oh come on Iain. Recognize your urban experience to be very different from lets say mine. If I saw two men underneath a dark London railway arch with sticks doing something, would I as a lone woman risk stopping and talking to them? I'm not some saddo enveloped in their iPhone missing the interests of the urban landscape. I'm trying to avoid attack.
November 26, 2019
This is the worst book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read ‘The Raw Shark Texts’, so that’s saying something!).
Unfortunately I have a condition which compels me to finish a book once I’ve started it, so I had to finish it. The only way I found to make myself do this was to only read it when I was blow drying my hair. It took over a year (and lead to some occasions where I just went out with dirty hair).
Strongly recommend you avoid this book.
Unfortunately I have a condition which compels me to finish a book once I’ve started it, so I had to finish it. The only way I found to make myself do this was to only read it when I was blow drying my hair. It took over a year (and lead to some occasions where I just went out with dirty hair).
Strongly recommend you avoid this book.
September 17, 2025
i had to give this up. i wanted to like it, a book about weird and niche quirks and history about london is right up my street. sadly the writing style and rambling just isnt for me.
in some ways i wonder if this is what its like having a conversation with me
in some ways i wonder if this is what its like having a conversation with me
May 6, 2021
Momentarily brilliant; often pretentious; sometimes baffling.
September 1, 2018
This is supposedly Iain Sinclair’s final book on London in a series of book which form a cultural catalogue based on walks around the city he was been writing from his home in Hackney since 1975.
He is an amusing companion and has done some interesting walks including Orbital (an anti clockwise walk around the M25 Motorway) exploring edgelands and London Overground: A Days Walk Around the Ginger Line (clockwise) looking at the gentrification process going in London’s Inner Suburbs.
In this book he does a reverse circuit of the London Overground and a couple of linear jaunts one along the soon to be electrified Gospel Oak to Barking line (The Goblin line) and another long walk in costume from Waltham Abbey through Brexitland to St Leonards following the route of Harold before the Battle of Hastings. He also revisits some hold haunts in the London Docklands which he wrote about in his 1980s book Downriver and the canoes around the Olympic Park which was the subject of his Ghost Milk book.
He is clearly a big fan of WG Sebald and there are the signature Sebaldian black and white photographs and a repeating refrain of melancholy about his description of continual changes to the city which he cant always fully accept on an emotional level.
But quite often this deteriorates into curmudgeonly, peevish and sour rants against his pet hates which include public sector regeneration slogans; cyclists and mobile phone users. Less TS Elliot, recounting lost souls in an unreal city and more like JR Hartley,” betraying his befuddlement at the modern world” as one reviewer put it.
Sometimes his rants are hilarious such as his diatribe against Hackney Council’s free breakfasts for cyclists in London Fields and his doleful incantation of billboard slogans which he attacks as part of the “slow death of meaningful language”:
“TRANFORMING WASTE
INVESTING TO IMPROVE OUR STREETS
BUILT TO OUTPERFORM
WORKING FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
INVESTING IN THE WALKING ENVIRONMENT
PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
CREATING THE SPACE TO INSPIRE
JUST ENOUGH IS MORE
OUR PROPERTY KNOWLEDGE GIVES YOU POWER
TURNING IDEAS INTO BUSINESS
TRANSFORMING AND RESTORING LIVES
A HOME FOR EVERYONE
WORLD LEADER IN PAINTBALL
WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH HACKNEY COUNCIL
OWN A PIECE OF EAST LONDON HERITAGE
CCTV CAMERAS INSTALLED FOR THE PURPOSE OF CRIME
DELIVERING GOOD DECISIONS
INVESTING IN COMPETITIVENESS
IMPOSSIBILITY IS NOTHING
HACKNEY IS MORE INTERESTING THAN HISTORY”
But he has always had a love hate relationship with London and I hope it is not his last word on the city. He should take a bit of a rest, perhaps and write about some other stuff and gain his mojo and then return.
He is an amusing companion and has done some interesting walks including Orbital (an anti clockwise walk around the M25 Motorway) exploring edgelands and London Overground: A Days Walk Around the Ginger Line (clockwise) looking at the gentrification process going in London’s Inner Suburbs.
In this book he does a reverse circuit of the London Overground and a couple of linear jaunts one along the soon to be electrified Gospel Oak to Barking line (The Goblin line) and another long walk in costume from Waltham Abbey through Brexitland to St Leonards following the route of Harold before the Battle of Hastings. He also revisits some hold haunts in the London Docklands which he wrote about in his 1980s book Downriver and the canoes around the Olympic Park which was the subject of his Ghost Milk book.
He is clearly a big fan of WG Sebald and there are the signature Sebaldian black and white photographs and a repeating refrain of melancholy about his description of continual changes to the city which he cant always fully accept on an emotional level.
But quite often this deteriorates into curmudgeonly, peevish and sour rants against his pet hates which include public sector regeneration slogans; cyclists and mobile phone users. Less TS Elliot, recounting lost souls in an unreal city and more like JR Hartley,” betraying his befuddlement at the modern world” as one reviewer put it.
Sometimes his rants are hilarious such as his diatribe against Hackney Council’s free breakfasts for cyclists in London Fields and his doleful incantation of billboard slogans which he attacks as part of the “slow death of meaningful language”:
“TRANFORMING WASTE
INVESTING TO IMPROVE OUR STREETS
BUILT TO OUTPERFORM
WORKING FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
INVESTING IN THE WALKING ENVIRONMENT
PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
CREATING THE SPACE TO INSPIRE
JUST ENOUGH IS MORE
OUR PROPERTY KNOWLEDGE GIVES YOU POWER
TURNING IDEAS INTO BUSINESS
TRANSFORMING AND RESTORING LIVES
A HOME FOR EVERYONE
WORLD LEADER IN PAINTBALL
WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH HACKNEY COUNCIL
OWN A PIECE OF EAST LONDON HERITAGE
CCTV CAMERAS INSTALLED FOR THE PURPOSE OF CRIME
DELIVERING GOOD DECISIONS
INVESTING IN COMPETITIVENESS
IMPOSSIBILITY IS NOTHING
HACKNEY IS MORE INTERESTING THAN HISTORY”
But he has always had a love hate relationship with London and I hope it is not his last word on the city. He should take a bit of a rest, perhaps and write about some other stuff and gain his mojo and then return.
Read
March 6, 2025Further investigation confirms that yes, when I went off Sinclair for a decade or so, it was mainly just a lack of synchronisation in our getting older and grumpier, such that he was cantankerously mourning the erosion of London while I was still having a whale of a time. Whereas now, it's harder to argue with his disgusted vision of "a city divided into two hemispheres, two Westfield supermalls. A city of pop-ups, naming rights, committee-bodged artworks, cash-cow academies, post-truth blogs and charity runs. And government pay-offs to the right sort of private enterprise." Hell, I hadn't even planned to finish it today, but the news of another creative space closed down on suspect grounds, and never mind that the neighbouring space got a thank-you at the Oscars, added a certain narrative gravity; this is a book that knows all about 'temporary' closures that somehow become another sell-off, hoardings making grand claims of art and place as they tear down yet another somewhere to make more lucrative nowhere-in-particular.
This is not to say it isn't sometimes ridiculous, mind. There's a recurrent note of pissiness at another author with a similar schtick being more revered than him, niggling at the times Sebald finesses reality – but equally, it does feel significant or maybe just funny that someone whose avatar always walked and took trains should have died in a car, and there is something intriguing in the notion of walking with another walker's companion who can't quite remember if he really came here with 'Max' or just read that version. Cyclists are a particular bugbear, sometimes resulting in passages that would only need the red pen through a few of the longer words and Flann O'Brien references before they'd be at home in the Express: cyclists are rude, you say? Hire bike schemes frustrating and unreliable? Truly, I have never heard the like! And while 'Shardenfreude' is an excellent coinage, I was at London Bridge the day before I read that section, and have to confess, as Sinclair never can, that once in a while, for all the overruns and overspends, a redevelopment project will eventually work out OK. Still, only a fool or a shill would deny that's the exception rather than the rule, and reading an elegy which culminates in that fateful wrong turn of a year, 2016, the telling line comes from one of Sinclair's regular sidekicks, Kötting: "'One can imagine everything, predict most things,' Andrew said, 'save how low we can all sink.'"
This is not to say it isn't sometimes ridiculous, mind. There's a recurrent note of pissiness at another author with a similar schtick being more revered than him, niggling at the times Sebald finesses reality – but equally, it does feel significant or maybe just funny that someone whose avatar always walked and took trains should have died in a car, and there is something intriguing in the notion of walking with another walker's companion who can't quite remember if he really came here with 'Max' or just read that version. Cyclists are a particular bugbear, sometimes resulting in passages that would only need the red pen through a few of the longer words and Flann O'Brien references before they'd be at home in the Express: cyclists are rude, you say? Hire bike schemes frustrating and unreliable? Truly, I have never heard the like! And while 'Shardenfreude' is an excellent coinage, I was at London Bridge the day before I read that section, and have to confess, as Sinclair never can, that once in a while, for all the overruns and overspends, a redevelopment project will eventually work out OK. Still, only a fool or a shill would deny that's the exception rather than the rule, and reading an elegy which culminates in that fateful wrong turn of a year, 2016, the telling line comes from one of Sinclair's regular sidekicks, Kötting: "'One can imagine everything, predict most things,' Andrew said, 'save how low we can all sink.'"
May 6, 2018
I’ll be visiting London this fall for the first time since my honeymoon 23 years ago. In anticipation of all the changes that await me, I decided to check out Iain Sinclair’s The Last London. Although he’s a well-known novelist in the UK, I’m only familiar with him through his appearances in filmmaker John Roger’s YouTube videos of his walks around literary London.
Based on the description, I was expecting a melancholy tract lamenting the relentless modernization and homogenization of the ancient city, and that’s certainly plays a big part, but on the whole this book is much more nuanced and multi-faceted than that. First and foremost, this is a challenging read. Sinclair has a very unique way of coming at things and, as a result, his writing is often unnecessarily complex and circuitous. I frequently found myself unsure of the point he was trying to make. There are also many references to art – literature and literary figures, in particular – much of which was not familiar to me. But the reward for toughing it out are moments of undeniable brilliance and humor.
To the younger crowd, he might come off as curmudgeonly, particularly when he carps about the dangers of bike traffic or obsessive cell phone dependency, but that’s also when he’s at his most hilarious. Two of the book’s funniest passages are simply snippets of overheard phone conversations and a list of slogans taken off posters pasted up in his beloved neighborhood of Hackney. It seems that Sinclair sees globalization as blurring the edges of London (and, by extension, all cities), as it bleeds into the rest of the world, losing what makes it unique and making it indistinguishable from any city, anywhere.
For all its dry humor, keen observation, sardonic wit and obvious affection, The Last London makes me a bit heartsick for all that’s been lost in the two decades since last I saw that amazing city.
Based on the description, I was expecting a melancholy tract lamenting the relentless modernization and homogenization of the ancient city, and that’s certainly plays a big part, but on the whole this book is much more nuanced and multi-faceted than that. First and foremost, this is a challenging read. Sinclair has a very unique way of coming at things and, as a result, his writing is often unnecessarily complex and circuitous. I frequently found myself unsure of the point he was trying to make. There are also many references to art – literature and literary figures, in particular – much of which was not familiar to me. But the reward for toughing it out are moments of undeniable brilliance and humor.
To the younger crowd, he might come off as curmudgeonly, particularly when he carps about the dangers of bike traffic or obsessive cell phone dependency, but that’s also when he’s at his most hilarious. Two of the book’s funniest passages are simply snippets of overheard phone conversations and a list of slogans taken off posters pasted up in his beloved neighborhood of Hackney. It seems that Sinclair sees globalization as blurring the edges of London (and, by extension, all cities), as it bleeds into the rest of the world, losing what makes it unique and making it indistinguishable from any city, anywhere.
For all its dry humor, keen observation, sardonic wit and obvious affection, The Last London makes me a bit heartsick for all that’s been lost in the two decades since last I saw that amazing city.
March 4, 2025
The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City by Iain Sinclair is a deeply evocative and multifaceted exploration of London, blending fiction, history, and personal narrative. Sinclair has an evaluative ability to perceive the city's texture not through the conventional, superficial lens but through the perspectives of specialists, like filmmakers and photographers, who provide deeper insights into its layers. His writing is a critical excavation, delving into the unseen, intangible aspects of the city, far beneath its glossy surface. Sinclair challenges the typical, surface-level descriptions of London, offering a more complex and layered portrayal that stretches the boundaries of what we traditionally understand as the city’s identity. His approach to writing is non-institutionalized, almost rebellious, as it unearths hidden truths that are often overshadowed by mainstream depictions. It is interesting to speculate on what a future-historic imagination of London may feel and sound like in the same vein.
April 10, 2021
A collection of pieces going back 30 years, but worth it for the more recent (2016) especially Brexit Means Brexit, and all about his walking tours of greater London. Dense, sometimes too dense sentences and free association, but then I'm into that. Tying Brexit to William the Conqueror, and then walking to Hastings (as in the Battle of..) is just a marvelous model for touring the emotional as well as physical geography of a place.
"Our cities are becoming electrified iceberg liners, islands from which the underclass can be excluded; liners serviced by zero-hour serfs.
There is no corrupt fortune, no spurious liquidity of kleptocrats and arms-dealers that cannot be sweetened within a couple of miles of this park.
London as a detective story. story with unlimited chapters and no resolution. The point being to find the inspiration for the next journey, a new beginning. Another shot at redemption.
"Our cities are becoming electrified iceberg liners, islands from which the underclass can be excluded; liners serviced by zero-hour serfs.
There is no corrupt fortune, no spurious liquidity of kleptocrats and arms-dealers that cannot be sweetened within a couple of miles of this park.
London as a detective story. story with unlimited chapters and no resolution. The point being to find the inspiration for the next journey, a new beginning. Another shot at redemption.
December 4, 2022
This is not necessarily a bad book, but I was the wrong reader. I thought this would be a book about London, which I have visited on multiple occasions and lived there for six months as a child, and technically it was about London, but only a small neighborhood within London. This would be fine if you’ve ever been to that neighborhood or were at least familiar with it, but there didn’t t seem to be anything remarkable about this neighborhood. To make matters worse, the author has a very dense writing style, which comes across more that he is trying to show off how smart he is instead of trying to communicate clearly or even lyrically with the reader. The final nail in this book’s coffin was the author was a real sour puss and didn’t seem like someone I would want to spend time with. If you want to read about an obscure neighborhood in London from someone who does really want you to enjoy his stories, then this book is for you, otherwise, I’d suggest you look elsewhere.
November 16, 2022
Reading about late century changes to neighborhoods, parks & subsets of London is as promising as any topic, especially with clever references to the London Eye, bike lanes & Boris Johnson
But getting through this book was a never-ending slog, unpleasant & challenging as the author's stream of consciousnesses insults about change grow tiresome
Within the chummy literary circles of London, Sinclair is considered a masterful writer whose writing is as acrobatic as a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist
And he backs it up, with great sentences & astute observations about everything from parks & trams to runners & bankers.
In the end though, this book can't succeed with so much venom directed at the very city he claims to love, paired with his obnoxious & pretentious commentary about a way of life that he objects to
But getting through this book was a never-ending slog, unpleasant & challenging as the author's stream of consciousnesses insults about change grow tiresome
Within the chummy literary circles of London, Sinclair is considered a masterful writer whose writing is as acrobatic as a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist
And he backs it up, with great sentences & astute observations about everything from parks & trams to runners & bankers.
In the end though, this book can't succeed with so much venom directed at the very city he claims to love, paired with his obnoxious & pretentious commentary about a way of life that he objects to
June 24, 2020
After a bright start it became a hard slog, only dogged determination and sheer bloody mindedness got me through it. Seven weeks to read 318 pages is just too long. That said, it’s well worth reading up to page 172 (paperback) but Part 3 ‘Walking’ was tough going.
I have seen Iain Sinclair interviewed and filmed on his walks around London and he comes across as an engaging character, interesting to listen to with a rare insight into what’s become labelled as ‘psychogeography’. However from reading this book one could come away with the impression that the author is a rather supercilious individual with a taste for name dropping and obscure references.
He must have written better books but I’m afraid The Last London will be The Last Sinclair for me.
I have seen Iain Sinclair interviewed and filmed on his walks around London and he comes across as an engaging character, interesting to listen to with a rare insight into what’s become labelled as ‘psychogeography’. However from reading this book one could come away with the impression that the author is a rather supercilious individual with a taste for name dropping and obscure references.
He must have written better books but I’m afraid The Last London will be The Last Sinclair for me.
October 27, 2022
Blokecore- can almost hear a man reading this in a British accent at points, that's how strong the voice is. Works not as a comprehensive or statistical study of London but one man on the ground, talking with his friends, seeing how the city has shifted away from him and his generation into the hands of venture capital and a new world. Committed wholly to its psychogeographical nature- when discussing cyclists and rent a bikes, Sinclair does not feel the need to tell you that bikes are better for the environment (you are smart! you already know this!)- but only how it affects the flow of the city, how it has made the city more papered with adverts than ever before, how it has taken the tow path from walkers.
April 29, 2025
This is my second Sinclair book and I'm still getting the hang of his writing. As an American, there are so many references and asides that go over my head and I end up skimming parts. The strongest chapter, for me, was Two Swimming Pools or Shardenfreude contrasting the absolute decadence (to the point of absurdity) of the infinity pool in the upper echelons of the Shard and the attempts in Hackney to revive the old community pools. There's an air of melancholy, anger, and resignation at what London post-2012 Olympics has become, but is undercut by clearly spending lots of time with some arty intelligentsia, one that reads as very male.
January 26, 2018
Came to me highly regarded with 5stars in Stewart Lee's round up of the books he read in 2017.
I like London, I like Stewart Lee and I like social commentary pieces so I thought I'd give it a go.
I found the prose inaccessible and, having got through one chapter really didn't have a clue what I had just read, I just couldn't follow it. Second chapter the same so I've given up.
Maybe it has some really great things to say, but I couldn't get at them.
I like London, I like Stewart Lee and I like social commentary pieces so I thought I'd give it a go.
I found the prose inaccessible and, having got through one chapter really didn't have a clue what I had just read, I just couldn't follow it. Second chapter the same so I've given up.
Maybe it has some really great things to say, but I couldn't get at them.
April 30, 2019
You either get Iain Sinclair or you don't. I often find his grumpiness verging on sneery (mate, don't have a go at people living in a gentrified area when you live on the leafiest street in the borough) and of course his verbose referentiality is completely unnecessary, but once I become reacquainted with it, I always enjoy it. And it's funny.
July 26, 2023
Very interesting material and well written. It is unfortunate that it is all bait cliquey in terms of name dropping and references and style. He has a very set group with whom he wishes to walk, almost entirely men. I felt some tinge of racism.
January 2, 2018
His last on London, though it won't be; wonderfully weary and exhausting.
January 24, 2018
Sublime
May 5, 2018
A very very clever writer
March 2, 2019
Sinclairin maagisten kävelykirjojen kulminaatio tuo nykyhetkeen, The Shardin uima-altaaseen asti. Upeaa kieltä, jälleen kerran. Lopussa piipahtaa Alan Moore.
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