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London Overground
Iain Sinclair explores modern London through a day's hike around the London Overground route.
The completion of the full circle of London Overground provides Iain Sinclair with a new path to walk the shifting territory of the capital. With thirty-three stations and thirty-five miles to tramp - plus inevitable and unforeseen detours and false steps - he embarks on a marathon circumnavigation at street level, tracking the necklace of garages, fish farms, bakeries, convenience cafés, cycle repair shops and Minder lock-ups which enclose inner London.
'He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph' Scotland on Sunday
'Sinclair breathes wondrous life into monstrous man-made landscapes' Times Literary Supplement
'If you are drawn to English that doesn't just sing, but sings the blues and does scat and rocks the joint, try Sinclair. His sentences deliver a rush like no one else's' Washington Post
The completion of the full circle of London Overground provides Iain Sinclair with a new path to walk the shifting territory of the capital. With thirty-three stations and thirty-five miles to tramp - plus inevitable and unforeseen detours and false steps - he embarks on a marathon circumnavigation at street level, tracking the necklace of garages, fish farms, bakeries, convenience cafés, cycle repair shops and Minder lock-ups which enclose inner London.
'He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph' Scotland on Sunday
'Sinclair breathes wondrous life into monstrous man-made landscapes' Times Literary Supplement
'If you are drawn to English that doesn't just sing, but sings the blues and does scat and rocks the joint, try Sinclair. His sentences deliver a rush like no one else's' Washington Post
259 pages, Paperback
First published June 4, 2015
28 people are currently reading
424 people want to read
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 55 reviews
October 4, 2017
DNF - dull, rambling, un-engaging and overblown. Not a walk around the Overground more a ramble through the dictionary to try and use as many sentences and self-important words that left me bored and disappointed. It could have been so much better. Other people liked it but not me.
April 6, 2016
Ian Sinclair is an acquired taste. His prose is often overblown - metaphor is heaped upon metaphor and imagery runs riot. He's also apt to veer off on lengthy digressions on some of his pet obsessions - usually obscure writers, painters, philosophers or other nefarious flaneurs that he has known and loved. Fortunately, I have acquired the taste and am happy to follow him on his ramblings, mainly because I know most of the areas of London he visits and I have also read or seen the works of most of the people he writes about.
Sinclair is what is fashionably, if a tad pretentiously, called a psychogeographer. In this book he follows the trail of the recently joined up and rebranded Ginger Line - the circular overground London railway. On his travels, he discusses the likes of Angela Carter, J.G.Ballard, Leon Kossof, Sigmund Freud etc. What I also like about him is that I share most of his views on London past and present: a fascination for walking and making discoveries from the past. Like him, I see railways and roads less as the city's arteries and more as mystic ley lines that draw together and trace bits of the history of London. I also share his anger and sadness about much of what has and is happening to London in the 21st century. I can best sum this up with the example of a visit I made two week's ago to the Bryant and May factory in East London. This is where the famous matchgirls' strike took place in the 1880s - one of the seminal events in the struggle for workers' and women's rights. The factory is (of course) now a gated community of luxury flats. This means that the wall display describing the history of the factory and the strike is inaccessible to the general public. I went with a group and we phoned in advance to gain entry but, when we arrived, the man at the entrance was very reluctant to let us in and it was only after several lengthy phone calls that we gained access. A perfect metaphor for much of what is happening to London!
Sinclair is what is fashionably, if a tad pretentiously, called a psychogeographer. In this book he follows the trail of the recently joined up and rebranded Ginger Line - the circular overground London railway. On his travels, he discusses the likes of Angela Carter, J.G.Ballard, Leon Kossof, Sigmund Freud etc. What I also like about him is that I share most of his views on London past and present: a fascination for walking and making discoveries from the past. Like him, I see railways and roads less as the city's arteries and more as mystic ley lines that draw together and trace bits of the history of London. I also share his anger and sadness about much of what has and is happening to London in the 21st century. I can best sum this up with the example of a visit I made two week's ago to the Bryant and May factory in East London. This is where the famous matchgirls' strike took place in the 1880s - one of the seminal events in the struggle for workers' and women's rights. The factory is (of course) now a gated community of luxury flats. This means that the wall display describing the history of the factory and the strike is inaccessible to the general public. I went with a group and we phoned in advance to gain entry but, when we arrived, the man at the entrance was very reluctant to let us in and it was only after several lengthy phone calls that we gained access. A perfect metaphor for much of what is happening to London!
October 4, 2019
By Sinclair's wayward standards London Overground is a strangely focused account of a strangely controlled expedition around the new Ginger Line which brought above ground train routes through areas of London which had been bereft since Thatcher took her throne. I will use Sinclair's own term for this impeccable prose: managed gloom. There's a poesis in decay for the author. One thinks of Jules Renard or more famously Harold Pinter.
Linking Angela Carter, JG Ballard and a host of lesser figures, the account is both heartbreaking and forever fascinating. We have Beckett during his troubled faze, Rimbaud and Verlaine engaging in spats and using fish to prove a point. Most bizarre of all is Boris Johnson. That holds true in all contexts. Here, he's the Mayor of London and whistling about on his bicycle. I recognize that Sinclair isn't for everyone but he's endlessly intriguing -- worth a look.
Linking Angela Carter, JG Ballard and a host of lesser figures, the account is both heartbreaking and forever fascinating. We have Beckett during his troubled faze, Rimbaud and Verlaine engaging in spats and using fish to prove a point. Most bizarre of all is Boris Johnson. That holds true in all contexts. Here, he's the Mayor of London and whistling about on his bicycle. I recognize that Sinclair isn't for everyone but he's endlessly intriguing -- worth a look.
September 6, 2018
I came across Iain Sinclair by accident. I was watching some London stuff on YouTube and came across a walk he did and it was so utterly fascinating. He is a novelist, but does a lot of London exploring works and this is a walk done with the film maker Andrew Kotting. Places, buildings spark off diversions down historical and literary paths. I learnt so much and have plenty of follow up reading to tackle. His writing style is very individual, it does at times verge on ridiculously over-written but its like taking a walk with a good train nerd expert, Peter Ackroyd and Stephen Fry all rolled into one.
October 10, 2017
Sinclair well past his best, out of touch and by now cripplingly self aware of his technique
April 28, 2018
Iain Sinclair, cramming as many cultural references and metaphors into your prose doesn't make you appear sophisticated or witty - it makes you come across as a pretentious, sniveling cunt.
February 1, 2022
Functionally DNF, as I skimmed aggressively from about halfway. Probably a harsh 1*, but let's be honest - I skimmed aggressively from halfway, how good could I have found it?
I've tried Sinclair before and something never quite clicked for me, but I jumped at the chance to give this a shot. I'm a huge fan of travelogues, especially walking ones. I'm an unrepentant Anglophile and a bit of a trainspotter. Rather than being the book where it finally clicked for me with Sinclair, it was instead the confirmation he's just not for me. Relatively short but dragged for ages. Aggressively, almost knowingly dull. Crammed with references and allusions that seemingly only exist for their own sake. Even with my scorched-earth skimming of the back half, it felt like it would never end. No thanks, just no thanks.
I've tried Sinclair before and something never quite clicked for me, but I jumped at the chance to give this a shot. I'm a huge fan of travelogues, especially walking ones. I'm an unrepentant Anglophile and a bit of a trainspotter. Rather than being the book where it finally clicked for me with Sinclair, it was instead the confirmation he's just not for me. Relatively short but dragged for ages. Aggressively, almost knowingly dull. Crammed with references and allusions that seemingly only exist for their own sake. Even with my scorched-earth skimming of the back half, it felt like it would never end. No thanks, just no thanks.
July 6, 2025
I never know how to describe IS’s books to friends - London is his canvas & its history, geography, memories, people, the deep (psychic?) landscape of the city his subject. Dense, digressive but always rewarding (for me, anyway). Not his best but still really engrossing.
November 18, 2024
classic bit of fláneurie that could sometimes find itself lost in metaphor and tangent, but that made me feel smug on my commute
January 2, 2019
Describing someone as s national treasure isn't always the straightforward compliment it at first seems. There is a hint of the safe and officially approved about those to whom the term is applied.
Iain Sinclair is none of those things, having spent decades writing books that don't fit neatly into pre-defined genres, giving him more than anyone the best hope of rehabilitating this abused status.
London Overground is another book in this tradition, a mad perambulation around the route of the capital's Overground railway covering thirty-five miles and a world that exists just below sight
A surreal place where Angela Carter rubs shoulders with the Kray twins and dodgy geezers operating out of railway arches mix with the hippest of hipsters. There is a touch of poignancy about this circumnavigation because Sinclair is travelling through a world that is being determinedly erased
The developers and urban improvers with ice water in their veins and a spreadsheet in lieu of a soul don't much like the ramshackle, eccentric London Sinclair had spent his life exploring. Theirs is a world of loft apartments, and investment opportunities; the ducking and diving of London's shadow world is anathema to them, an aberration to be gentrified out of existence.
I don't fancy their chances, London is too complex, too drenched in history art and strangeness to be reduced to a safe playground for the sort of people who are willing to pay £5 for a bowl of cereal. In Iain Sinclair it has found the perfect biographer.
Dr Johnson said that when someone is tired of London' they are tired of life. Sinclair is clearly tired of neither; long may his wanderings continue.
Iain Sinclair is none of those things, having spent decades writing books that don't fit neatly into pre-defined genres, giving him more than anyone the best hope of rehabilitating this abused status.
London Overground is another book in this tradition, a mad perambulation around the route of the capital's Overground railway covering thirty-five miles and a world that exists just below sight
A surreal place where Angela Carter rubs shoulders with the Kray twins and dodgy geezers operating out of railway arches mix with the hippest of hipsters. There is a touch of poignancy about this circumnavigation because Sinclair is travelling through a world that is being determinedly erased
The developers and urban improvers with ice water in their veins and a spreadsheet in lieu of a soul don't much like the ramshackle, eccentric London Sinclair had spent his life exploring. Theirs is a world of loft apartments, and investment opportunities; the ducking and diving of London's shadow world is anathema to them, an aberration to be gentrified out of existence.
I don't fancy their chances, London is too complex, too drenched in history art and strangeness to be reduced to a safe playground for the sort of people who are willing to pay £5 for a bowl of cereal. In Iain Sinclair it has found the perfect biographer.
Dr Johnson said that when someone is tired of London' they are tired of life. Sinclair is clearly tired of neither; long may his wanderings continue.
January 23, 2023
Wasn't really sure what to expect but this book really wasn't for me so my ranking possibly a little unfair.
The author has a clear style which is both poetic and churlish at times.
Also I don't think this line is commonly referred to as the "ginger line".
The author has a clear style which is both poetic and churlish at times.
Also I don't think this line is commonly referred to as the "ginger line".
February 5, 2018
Largely pretentious twaddle. A journey around one of the less interesting lines, really just a rebranded collection of bits n bobs of railway, with a pompous narrator. There are some good passages, such as the potted biography of Angela Carter but mostly this consists of trying to make largely mundane parts of London sound great. What he marshals and how he presents his tales though are intense and yet dull. Then there his eulogising of his walking companion, who isn't so interesting as to warrant such extensive examination. Although the twist at the end might partially explain this.
The beginning of the book is particularly dense, with a pomposity and over use of adjectives, which is quite off-putting. I suspect most readers get no further. Plus there is the classic pitfall for those who profess profound knowledge - the obvious mistake which shows they are not as intellectual as they profess. The example I noted was his ignorance of why a memorial to rail workers listed WWI as 1914-19. He smart arsedly quips about the war lasting a year longer for rail workers, rather than doing the research and realising that some memorials list the armistice as the end (1918) and others the peace treaty (1919). For someone who is grandstanding about the depth of his knowledge on all things along the route, this is a rookie error. There are probably more which I'm not well versed in myself.
All-in-all, this travelogue tries too hard to be superior and excepting a few passages, falls on its face.
The beginning of the book is particularly dense, with a pomposity and over use of adjectives, which is quite off-putting. I suspect most readers get no further. Plus there is the classic pitfall for those who profess profound knowledge - the obvious mistake which shows they are not as intellectual as they profess. The example I noted was his ignorance of why a memorial to rail workers listed WWI as 1914-19. He smart arsedly quips about the war lasting a year longer for rail workers, rather than doing the research and realising that some memorials list the armistice as the end (1918) and others the peace treaty (1919). For someone who is grandstanding about the depth of his knowledge on all things along the route, this is a rookie error. There are probably more which I'm not well versed in myself.
All-in-all, this travelogue tries too hard to be superior and excepting a few passages, falls on its face.
March 2, 2019
I was looking forward to reading this. However it was bitterly disappointing. There was so little about the walk and line itself. It was just pages of writers and artists the author knew, and thousands of little insights into just how erudite he is mixed in with degree level naval gazing.
I've never abandoned a book before, but I was so close on this one. It seems apt that there were a lot of mentions of JG Ballard, and nod to Crash, as that is the only book I've read that is worse than this one.
I've never abandoned a book before, but I was so close on this one. It seems apt that there were a lot of mentions of JG Ballard, and nod to Crash, as that is the only book I've read that is worse than this one.
June 12, 2017
I'm breaking with the five word review format to say this:
There is something oh so very satisfying about opening your book on platform 15 at Clapham Junction only to find yourself at the start of a new chapter entitled "Clapham Junction to Imperial Wharf". Sinclair keeps himself in my top three writers with this book, inspiring me to discover as yet unknown passages, journeys and words.
A delicious salmagundy indeed.
There is something oh so very satisfying about opening your book on platform 15 at Clapham Junction only to find yourself at the start of a new chapter entitled "Clapham Junction to Imperial Wharf". Sinclair keeps himself in my top three writers with this book, inspiring me to discover as yet unknown passages, journeys and words.
A delicious salmagundy indeed.
September 3, 2017
this book is total rubbish
October 24, 2020
Travel writing is usually fairly clear. Your traveller goes from Point A to Point B, meeting interesting people, seeing interesting places, and telling you historical or entertaining stuff on the way. See Bill Bryson if you want a laugh, H.V. Morton if you want history and a fair bit of imagination.
See Iain Sinclair if you want to end up slightly confused and feeling rather ignorant. I don't know most of the people he mentions in his circular walk around London, (apart from recognising names of the actors he encounters) and I thought I was reasonably au fait with the literature scene, if not all arts.
He walked 35 miles around the London Overground (corporate colour: ginger) with his friend, Andrew Kotting (British German with an umlaut, he says). Kotting is an odd companion, former delivery driver, odd-job man, now maker of even odder films. Towards the end of the walk, accomplished in 24 hours, he decides for his next project he's going to become a Straw Bear to accompany actor Freddie Jones reading John Clare's poetry. Ok, fine. Whatever floats your boat, mate.
I freely confess that I'm not a city person, and I often say the best thing you can do with London is to leave it. I felt very stifled by all that concrete, football stadia, car parks, oddball characters, and the general city-ness of what Sinclair was describing.
The best bit? A definition of a football stadium. "A large, unexplained oval structure left empty most of the time. Often unfinished in appearance, scaffolding seemingly integral to the design. Numerous designated parking bays but few cars. The stadium is never the right size, either too small for anticipated capacity (revenue stream), or too large (club in decline, waiting on overseas investment). . . .The football stadium should therefore be understood, not as a focus for local passions, but as a property speculation: future apartments trading on the club's mythology."
Not, I have to admit, my favourite book.
See Iain Sinclair if you want to end up slightly confused and feeling rather ignorant. I don't know most of the people he mentions in his circular walk around London, (apart from recognising names of the actors he encounters) and I thought I was reasonably au fait with the literature scene, if not all arts.
He walked 35 miles around the London Overground (corporate colour: ginger) with his friend, Andrew Kotting (British German with an umlaut, he says). Kotting is an odd companion, former delivery driver, odd-job man, now maker of even odder films. Towards the end of the walk, accomplished in 24 hours, he decides for his next project he's going to become a Straw Bear to accompany actor Freddie Jones reading John Clare's poetry. Ok, fine. Whatever floats your boat, mate.
I freely confess that I'm not a city person, and I often say the best thing you can do with London is to leave it. I felt very stifled by all that concrete, football stadia, car parks, oddball characters, and the general city-ness of what Sinclair was describing.
The best bit? A definition of a football stadium. "A large, unexplained oval structure left empty most of the time. Often unfinished in appearance, scaffolding seemingly integral to the design. Numerous designated parking bays but few cars. The stadium is never the right size, either too small for anticipated capacity (revenue stream), or too large (club in decline, waiting on overseas investment). . . .The football stadium should therefore be understood, not as a focus for local passions, but as a property speculation: future apartments trading on the club's mythology."
Not, I have to admit, my favourite book.
August 10, 2022
I have something of a love/hate relationship with Iain Sinclair. I find the novels very ‘difficult’ reads (ie at times unreadable) but have generally enjoyed his essays (the Swedenborg ones especially and pieces in the London Review of Books) and his walks around or through London. If you have read his previous works on this theme, London Orbital, Edge of the Orison, Hackney That Rose Red Empire then you will know what to expect; street observations in real-time in the company of a friend, literary allusions, William Blake, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and Angela Carter, anecdotes relating to various underworld characters, stream of consciousness, rails against property developers (Westway shopping centre) and the like. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Yes, all are present and correct in this volume as well. Haven’t we been here before?
I am certain I have read of his visit to Carter’s house to buy books, yes we know of the rapaciousness of various property developments, we have been to the Westway shopping centre with Sinclair a number of times now- its as rubbish as it was when he first wrote about it x years ago. What seemed sharp, incisive and even prescient fifteen or twenty years ago now feels tired and familiar. Govt quango’s, rapacious builders, cronyism, social responsibility) are now so much of the ‘everyday’ that to re-iterate them (again) seems a little tired and (almost) redundant despite 'those who do not remember the past…’. Sinclair is older too and I cannot help but feel that he is reliving past glories. He could almost have written this from his fireside.
This is not a terrible book but one could just as easily read one of his earlier volumes and come away with the same information and emotional satisfaction. Which one? My choice would be ‘Sorry Meniscus’(1999) a slender 90-page essay/meditation on the ill-fated Millennium Dome. Erudite, funny and frightening it's the perfect way into the Sinclair world.
I am certain I have read of his visit to Carter’s house to buy books, yes we know of the rapaciousness of various property developments, we have been to the Westway shopping centre with Sinclair a number of times now- its as rubbish as it was when he first wrote about it x years ago. What seemed sharp, incisive and even prescient fifteen or twenty years ago now feels tired and familiar. Govt quango’s, rapacious builders, cronyism, social responsibility) are now so much of the ‘everyday’ that to re-iterate them (again) seems a little tired and (almost) redundant despite 'those who do not remember the past…’. Sinclair is older too and I cannot help but feel that he is reliving past glories. He could almost have written this from his fireside.
This is not a terrible book but one could just as easily read one of his earlier volumes and come away with the same information and emotional satisfaction. Which one? My choice would be ‘Sorry Meniscus’(1999) a slender 90-page essay/meditation on the ill-fated Millennium Dome. Erudite, funny and frightening it's the perfect way into the Sinclair world.
July 6, 2019
I've enjoyed other Iain Sinclair books, his description of his circumnavigation of the M25, his polemic against the Olympic buildings in Hackney, The Rose Red Empire. This I haven't enjoyed as much and I've left the author and his companion somewhere between Shepherd's Bush and Willesden. The book is supposed to be a circumnavigation of London's Overground, a fairly new railway which has brought back into use or upgraded a number of existing lines to provide new journey opportunities. I used part myself just a week ago to travel from where I now live in Sussex to my home town of Harrow without the need to travel through central London or use the underground. Unfortunately, I get no sense of the author doing his journey in a day, such are the numerous digressions he makes. He is his usual acerbic self, describing the Docklands Light Railway as a fairground ride and the upmarket Chelsea Harbour development, built on a large brownfield site as being neither in Chelsea or a harbour. I can no doubt take up the journey when I am feeling less acerbic and dismissive myself
April 16, 2024
Whilst I really enjoyed the book, I didn't quite have time to read it in detail as I was mostly fishing for quotes for an assignment.
Nonetheless, Sinclair's psychogeographical (and sometimes psychedelic) account serves as an excellent picture in time of both the burgeoning Overground in 2015, and more broadly of his time in London, and of London's literary history.
Don't go in expecting a hugely nuanced take on the overground. Sinclair frames it as "the stripped spine of a beached monster" and (slightly less poetically) "a Viagra overload for property prices". He mourns the loss of the London he knew, and the London of J.G Ballard, but acknowledges himself as a man stuck in the past, "Don Quixote".
Nonetheless, his anecdotes and explorations serve for fun reading, and his commentary on the Overground is still prescient - even if it serves as the lighting rod for his socio-political critique of post-Thatcher London.
Nonetheless, Sinclair's psychogeographical (and sometimes psychedelic) account serves as an excellent picture in time of both the burgeoning Overground in 2015, and more broadly of his time in London, and of London's literary history.
Don't go in expecting a hugely nuanced take on the overground. Sinclair frames it as "the stripped spine of a beached monster" and (slightly less poetically) "a Viagra overload for property prices". He mourns the loss of the London he knew, and the London of J.G Ballard, but acknowledges himself as a man stuck in the past, "Don Quixote".
Nonetheless, his anecdotes and explorations serve for fun reading, and his commentary on the Overground is still prescient - even if it serves as the lighting rod for his socio-political critique of post-Thatcher London.
May 2, 2024
It takes a while to get into the rhythm of Iain Sinclair's style. For the first couple of chapters I found myself irritated by the dense allusion of the language, but once I'd settled into it and slowed my reading down, I found myself increasingly enjoying this. I really loved the section on Sinclair's meeting with Angela Carter and what she meant to him. It was a genuinely affectionate piece of writing that made me want to go and revisit all her books again. I was also delighted by the section on Leon Kossoff and his love of Willesden and painting railways. I am reading another book in which Kossoff features and it was great to be able to connect the two things. Singular, complex and mythic writing from Sinclair, who imbues every inch of the city with his own personal history, layered in with the thoughts and feelings of other, London luminaries and topped off with drunken encounters, dodgy garages under questionable railway arches and inhabitants great and small.
June 1, 2023
Whenever I read Iain Sinclair I have two conflicting responses. What an entertaining, erudite and thought provoking read and, conversely, what a pretentious load of twaddle.
Both may be true. Probably. Maybe. You decide, or not.
Sinclair's writing is a fusion of WG Sebald, Will Self and Jonathan Meades. Exhilarating and intriguing it occasions many diversions to Wikiland to find out just what, or who, he is talking about.
He embodies my favourite Meades' aphorism; 'Everything is interesting if you look at it long enough.'
Persevere with Iain Sinclair and you may well look at things differently.
Both may be true. Probably. Maybe. You decide, or not.
Sinclair's writing is a fusion of WG Sebald, Will Self and Jonathan Meades. Exhilarating and intriguing it occasions many diversions to Wikiland to find out just what, or who, he is talking about.
He embodies my favourite Meades' aphorism; 'Everything is interesting if you look at it long enough.'
Persevere with Iain Sinclair and you may well look at things differently.
July 29, 2021
Iain Sinclair and his walking companion, film-maker and artist Andrew Kotting set out on a day’s hike around the route of the London Overground line on a February day in 2012. The line itself wasn’t new, but a rebranded version of the old North London line added to various other inner London railways. His journey, occasional detours and encounters provided a snapshot of a rather grubby London of garages, small shops, planning disasters, avarice and poverty. Sinclair’s account is full of echoes of past lives and the ways a city becomes an ever-changing palimpsest of accumulated experiences.
October 21, 2021
I’m a Londoner through and through, proven via ancestry websites and DNA tests and exiled as I am I have always been partial to Iain Sinclair’s commitment to documenting the remnants of lost lives and areas of the city in his dense prose style - full of digression, metaphor and mention of numerous names we’ve only heard in passing or in a more difficult module of art or literature study. He’s not to everyone’s taste I know, but I was walking the pavement and tarmac with him revisiting my old haunts. Loved it.
June 19, 2018
Iain Sinclair know his neighbourhood like no other, always thinking and linking, his prose provides a musical scat of rambling the London Overground. Along with Andrew (straw bear with blisters) Kotting they rediscover haunts, hideaways and histories of long dead souls, enlighten us on some of the more interesting characters still drawing breath and as a bonus we have a list of pubs and cafes to frequent. Once you find his rhythm you're right there with him.
December 15, 2017
Classic stuff.
(Lots of confused readers who thought this would be about train lines instead of, as Sinclair notes at one point, minor and lost psychogeographers). And I wouldn't say Carter and Ballard are 'obscure'. More like 'extremely well known' and in Carter's case at least 'fucking awesome'. I should probably read some Ballard some day.
(Lots of confused readers who thought this would be about train lines instead of, as Sinclair notes at one point, minor and lost psychogeographers). And I wouldn't say Carter and Ballard are 'obscure'. More like 'extremely well known' and in Carter's case at least 'fucking awesome'. I should probably read some Ballard some day.
May 12, 2019
Despite its failings I really liked this book. It is very male and a bit name-droppingish, a bit self- satisfied. However I love the exploration of London's history and present. I was fascinated by the references to writers and artists and will re-read to follow them up. I liked the ideas about walking and psychogeography.
June 17, 2017
Honestly awful. The overblown metaphors left me completely confused and bored. Massive digressions about specific artists/writers made little sense if you're not familiar with their work. Not really anything to do with the overground as far as I managed to read
May 13, 2020
It rather reminds me of those entries in the Turner prize competition. It is actually rubbish but no-one dares suggest this for fear of seeming out of touch with the avant garde. And he does show off a lot.
June 11, 2023
I try to remember that each book is a significant amount of work for a human being, but really this did feel so flowery in language it was like reading someone's GCSE English assessment, while struggling to focus on where exactly was being travelled at most points
January 16, 2025
This is a book rich with insightful contextual prompts for photo walks and a documentary film walk through the lens of others, where layers of histories, memories and futures meet in, around and along some parts of the "Ginger Line."
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