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London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City
'London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.'
Robert Elms has seen London change beyond all imagining: the house he grew up in is now the behemoth that is the Westway flyover, and areas once deemed murder miles have morphed into the stuff of estate agents' dreams, seemingly in a matter of months.
Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.
Robert Elms has seen London change beyond all imagining: the house he grew up in is now the behemoth that is the Westway flyover, and areas once deemed murder miles have morphed into the stuff of estate agents' dreams, seemingly in a matter of months.
Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2019
36 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
About the author
Robert Elms
14 books14 followersRobert Elms is a British writer and broadcaster. Elms was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s and is currently known for his long-running radio show on BBC London 94.9. His book 'The Way We Wore,' charts the changing fashions of his own youth, linking them with the social history of the times.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 2, 2025
My parents are both from London, my father was born next to a pub in Fulham and my mother was born in the Royal Borough of Kensington. Her mother was a Cockney and all my grandparents lived in London in Putney and the Wandsworth Bridge Road. London has always had a special place in my heart.
I have always loved the names of some of the areas in London, Ladbrook Grove, Perivale, Cricklewood, Cockfosters and of course Burnt Oak.
The Elms family are Londoners through to their very core. He can trace his family back to Fredrick Elms, son of Eliza and father unknown and who was delivered in the Uxbridge Union Workhouse in 1862. Further digging into the roots of his family tree would lead back to Wiltshire. It adds fuel to his theory that as people migrate into London, they settle in the part of the city that faces the part of the country they come from.
His family is a blend of this London Mix along with dashes of Romany and Yiddish. For their sins, they are all almost supporters of QPR…
It just goes to show that all that cockney bollocks about Bow Bells is just that: Londoners are Londoners; choose the streets and they will shape you.
This is a book about memories, and he remembers the significant buildings from his childhood. They have been torn down, and London constantly reinvents itself. Cinemas are now evangelical churches. He almost never went to the theatre. Re recalls those who would do card tricks on the public and would always win. He mentions those dodgy shops that looked like they were selling quality goods, until you opened the plastic bag that they had sold you and realise that it was just crap inside.
London used to be full of secrets. If you lived there, you knew them almost by osmosis. There are less secrets now everything can be found on a search engine, but some can still be found if you know where to look.
He witnessed things that were eye-opening in different parts of the capital and is scared for life after a football exhibition that he went to. I thought that the chapter on travelling around London is great. It also shows just how effective a properly thought-out and subsidised transport system is. It is the lifeblood of this city.
His chapter about food in London is excellent. It brought back so many memories of my childhood food. I even ate in the Won Kei restaurant in Chinatown in my late teens. I remember the waiters being brusk and abrupt, but thankfully don’t remember them waving cleavers at us!
The swirl of different cultures in the city meant that life wasn’t always rosy. He documents some of the wilder moments of city life, including football matches where violence would erupt around him. This was a time where a single moment could become a trigger point and recounts a memory watching a battle between miners and the police; they both paused and separated to let a family pass, before carrying on scrapping again.
London will definitely exhaust you, but you can never exhaust London.
Elms particularly likes London at night. The darkness hides the grime, and the neon lights brighten the place up. He knew, though, that it could be deadly, even though most of the time the nights out were dark and anarchic and feral and fun. AS he reached his teenage years, he discovered music and the sexual awakening that came along with it. The evenings out now are much more expensive and he missed the fug that hung around in the rooms. These places had a lot of character and not a lot of decorum…
Some people never leave London. His aunt Nell died in the same house where she was born 90 years earlier. Those who do find a reason to leave often end up at the coast to gaze at the waves.
Elms thinks that London is the greatest city in the world. He is certain of this as he has lived in Spain for a period and always returned to his home city. Where you live in London is important to Londoners; small distances make for big differences. But where to live when he leaves home, so many options and ironically so few choices. He ends up living with Sade (!!) for a while until fame pulls her away from him.
But what is most evident throughout this book is that London is his home, and it is as much a part of him and his family as they are a part of London.
As much as I love Dorset, London still has a special place in my heart. This book is a love letter to his favourite city, his home city. It is a wonderful book, I loved it. It is full of details of London that only someone who spends 24 hours a day there and has lived their life in this city. I would urge you to get a copy and read this as soon as you can.
I know I am now chasing shadows, know that this wonderous warren is not the shameful, disgraceful, lustrous, lustful place it once was, but then nor am I.
This is my home town. My home, my town.
I have always loved the names of some of the areas in London, Ladbrook Grove, Perivale, Cricklewood, Cockfosters and of course Burnt Oak.
The Elms family are Londoners through to their very core. He can trace his family back to Fredrick Elms, son of Eliza and father unknown and who was delivered in the Uxbridge Union Workhouse in 1862. Further digging into the roots of his family tree would lead back to Wiltshire. It adds fuel to his theory that as people migrate into London, they settle in the part of the city that faces the part of the country they come from.
His family is a blend of this London Mix along with dashes of Romany and Yiddish. For their sins, they are all almost supporters of QPR…
It just goes to show that all that cockney bollocks about Bow Bells is just that: Londoners are Londoners; choose the streets and they will shape you.
This is a book about memories, and he remembers the significant buildings from his childhood. They have been torn down, and London constantly reinvents itself. Cinemas are now evangelical churches. He almost never went to the theatre. Re recalls those who would do card tricks on the public and would always win. He mentions those dodgy shops that looked like they were selling quality goods, until you opened the plastic bag that they had sold you and realise that it was just crap inside.
London used to be full of secrets. If you lived there, you knew them almost by osmosis. There are less secrets now everything can be found on a search engine, but some can still be found if you know where to look.
He witnessed things that were eye-opening in different parts of the capital and is scared for life after a football exhibition that he went to. I thought that the chapter on travelling around London is great. It also shows just how effective a properly thought-out and subsidised transport system is. It is the lifeblood of this city.
His chapter about food in London is excellent. It brought back so many memories of my childhood food. I even ate in the Won Kei restaurant in Chinatown in my late teens. I remember the waiters being brusk and abrupt, but thankfully don’t remember them waving cleavers at us!
The swirl of different cultures in the city meant that life wasn’t always rosy. He documents some of the wilder moments of city life, including football matches where violence would erupt around him. This was a time where a single moment could become a trigger point and recounts a memory watching a battle between miners and the police; they both paused and separated to let a family pass, before carrying on scrapping again.
London will definitely exhaust you, but you can never exhaust London.
Elms particularly likes London at night. The darkness hides the grime, and the neon lights brighten the place up. He knew, though, that it could be deadly, even though most of the time the nights out were dark and anarchic and feral and fun. AS he reached his teenage years, he discovered music and the sexual awakening that came along with it. The evenings out now are much more expensive and he missed the fug that hung around in the rooms. These places had a lot of character and not a lot of decorum…
Some people never leave London. His aunt Nell died in the same house where she was born 90 years earlier. Those who do find a reason to leave often end up at the coast to gaze at the waves.
Elms thinks that London is the greatest city in the world. He is certain of this as he has lived in Spain for a period and always returned to his home city. Where you live in London is important to Londoners; small distances make for big differences. But where to live when he leaves home, so many options and ironically so few choices. He ends up living with Sade (!!) for a while until fame pulls her away from him.
But what is most evident throughout this book is that London is his home, and it is as much a part of him and his family as they are a part of London.
As much as I love Dorset, London still has a special place in my heart. This book is a love letter to his favourite city, his home city. It is a wonderful book, I loved it. It is full of details of London that only someone who spends 24 hours a day there and has lived their life in this city. I would urge you to get a copy and read this as soon as you can.
I know I am now chasing shadows, know that this wonderous warren is not the shameful, disgraceful, lustrous, lustful place it once was, but then nor am I.
This is my home town. My home, my town.
March 15, 2019
I feel great affinity with Robert Elms. This may be because I listen to him on BBC Radio London most days. It may be because we’re both the same age. It may be that both of us are at Loftus Road for most QPR home games. Or it may be a sense of shared roots.
So, plenty of connections. But also, it has to be said, plenty of differences. Robert Elms is a very sharp dresser; I’m not. He is very cool and very connected; I am neither. He is a Londoner born and bred; I may live there now (in Barnes, an area for which Elms can never disguise his contempt) but, after a Woking birth, my childhood and adolescence was spent in Surrey.
Elms was brought up in Burnt Oak, far closer to the heart of London than Surrey, but still distant enough to make him feel marginalised, and sympathetic to others in the same boat; ‘I think Paul Weller, a man of similar age, attitude and attire, whom I admire enormously and whose London family were exiled even further, to Woking, carries a similar burden’ .
And that’s another connection. I too align myself with The Jam frontman even if, in my case, the only point of similarity is that we both hail from the same place (see http://www.bernardokeeffe.com/?p=819 )
My roots may be closer geographically to Weller, but I feel I know Robert Elms much better, and, after reading this hugely enjoyable, informative, revealing memoir, that is even more the case. When Elms writes of his childhood in Burnt Oak that ‘it was full of O’Keefes, Kellys and O’Neills.’ I almost think I could have been one of them. But I was in Weybridge at the time, and my O’Keeffes have two ‘f’s.
So London, for me, is not what it is for Elms. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t seduced by ‘London Made Us’. Reading it is very much like listening to the Robert Elms radio show – one moment you’re listening to a cockney geezer, the next you’re being spoken to by a sophisticated intellectual. Robert Elms is aware of these two sides of his personality, telling us that he ‘learned to be socially and vocally schizophrenic’. Even within a sentence his writing moves from one register to another, from what Elms calls his ‘Radio 4 voice’ to his ‘back-of-a-cab’ or ‘shouting-at-referees voice’. He calls this a ‘completely unconscious chameleon’ response, and in doing so makes us regard him, like the subject of his book, as something of a shape-shifter.
Elms’s language is just like his accent – ‘to this day I have an accent that leaps about all over the gaff’. Note that . Gaff. Not place. Gaff. Another sentence begins in Standard English only to end by stating that the building had ‘gorn’. Not gone. Gorn. Sometimes the cockney was a bit too much for this Surrey boy. I understood ‘I jumped in a sherbet’ only from the context (sherbet dab = cab). And when I came across this observation from Elms about his two linguistic selves I was baffled – ‘ I could spot a jekyll dicky or a pair of snide daisies with the best of them. But I could also talk pretty good grammar school when required’. I have no idea what a ‘jekyll dicky’ is, or indeed a ‘pair of snide daisies’. I googled both and the only thing that came up was Googlebooks directing me to Robert Elms’s ‘London Made Us’)
This transition from one register to another embodies and reflects the importance of class and social mobility in the book, issues which find their most powerful expression in Elms’s relationship with his mother. Her death, movingly described in the Introduction, together with her words ‘This is no longer my London’, provides the book's starting point, and she and Elms’s ancestors remain a presence throughout.
Social mobility and class lie at the book’s heart and I would be surprised if ‘Great Expectations’ is not Elms’s favourite Dickens novel. An early Magwitch reference alerts us to the possibility, but a later scene convinces us. Elms describes taking his mum to a Japanese restaurant ‘when I was doing all right, making a few bob, living in a flat in Bloomsbury and pretending I’d had a sophisticated palette all along’. It’s his ‘Joe Gargery moment’, one that ‘turned him into Pip’. And throughout ‘London Made Us’ there is a sense of Robert Elms as Pip, ‘educated beyond his station’, torn between the Forge of Burnt Oak and cutting-edge London.
Throughout there is a sense of Elms, like the mature narrator of ‘Great Expectations’, casting a guilt-ridden backwards glance at his errant youthful behaviour. It is, though, a little inconsistent. He may talk of his fondness for ‘silly haircuts’ and the ‘preposterous poetry’ with which he introduced Spandau Ballet at one of their first gigs, but he can also tell us that ‘all I wanted was to be a face about town’ or refer to himself as an ‘urban elitist’ with no accompanying ironic judgement.
Elms’s love for his city is profound. Equally apparent is his love for language. He’s a linguistic barrow-boy, hawking his verbal wares, foisting on us three phrases where one would do. He’s unable to resist the rhythmic trick, the wise-guy gag, the lure of alliteration or the look-at-me flourish. Hence – ‘our harshly polyglot peripherique’, ‘this all-pervading, all-providing, all-devouring behemoth of a birthright’, ‘this bright and shiny (or maybe shite and briny) twenty-first century Babylon’,‘ a rollicking redoubt of totters and tearaways’.
When it comes to London, though, Robert Elms knows his stuff and ‘London Made Us’ is a great read. His memories are personal and heartfelt, his knowledge hugely impressive. His love of the city is profound, and, as he takes you on a tour of his life and manor, he proves to be great company, even if you sometimes feel trapped in the back of his sherbet with your ears under assault.
‘London Made Us’ is about the city’s ever-changing nature, its refusal to stay as we remember it. It’s also about loss, something with which, as a fellow QPR fan, Robert Elms is very familiar There is so much here that strikes a chord. Not least the claim that the greatest ever London song is ‘Debris’.
So, plenty of connections. But also, it has to be said, plenty of differences. Robert Elms is a very sharp dresser; I’m not. He is very cool and very connected; I am neither. He is a Londoner born and bred; I may live there now (in Barnes, an area for which Elms can never disguise his contempt) but, after a Woking birth, my childhood and adolescence was spent in Surrey.
Elms was brought up in Burnt Oak, far closer to the heart of London than Surrey, but still distant enough to make him feel marginalised, and sympathetic to others in the same boat; ‘I think Paul Weller, a man of similar age, attitude and attire, whom I admire enormously and whose London family were exiled even further, to Woking, carries a similar burden’ .
And that’s another connection. I too align myself with The Jam frontman even if, in my case, the only point of similarity is that we both hail from the same place (see http://www.bernardokeeffe.com/?p=819 )
My roots may be closer geographically to Weller, but I feel I know Robert Elms much better, and, after reading this hugely enjoyable, informative, revealing memoir, that is even more the case. When Elms writes of his childhood in Burnt Oak that ‘it was full of O’Keefes, Kellys and O’Neills.’ I almost think I could have been one of them. But I was in Weybridge at the time, and my O’Keeffes have two ‘f’s.
So London, for me, is not what it is for Elms. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t seduced by ‘London Made Us’. Reading it is very much like listening to the Robert Elms radio show – one moment you’re listening to a cockney geezer, the next you’re being spoken to by a sophisticated intellectual. Robert Elms is aware of these two sides of his personality, telling us that he ‘learned to be socially and vocally schizophrenic’. Even within a sentence his writing moves from one register to another, from what Elms calls his ‘Radio 4 voice’ to his ‘back-of-a-cab’ or ‘shouting-at-referees voice’. He calls this a ‘completely unconscious chameleon’ response, and in doing so makes us regard him, like the subject of his book, as something of a shape-shifter.
Elms’s language is just like his accent – ‘to this day I have an accent that leaps about all over the gaff’. Note that . Gaff. Not place. Gaff. Another sentence begins in Standard English only to end by stating that the building had ‘gorn’. Not gone. Gorn. Sometimes the cockney was a bit too much for this Surrey boy. I understood ‘I jumped in a sherbet’ only from the context (sherbet dab = cab). And when I came across this observation from Elms about his two linguistic selves I was baffled – ‘ I could spot a jekyll dicky or a pair of snide daisies with the best of them. But I could also talk pretty good grammar school when required’. I have no idea what a ‘jekyll dicky’ is, or indeed a ‘pair of snide daisies’. I googled both and the only thing that came up was Googlebooks directing me to Robert Elms’s ‘London Made Us’)
This transition from one register to another embodies and reflects the importance of class and social mobility in the book, issues which find their most powerful expression in Elms’s relationship with his mother. Her death, movingly described in the Introduction, together with her words ‘This is no longer my London’, provides the book's starting point, and she and Elms’s ancestors remain a presence throughout.
Social mobility and class lie at the book’s heart and I would be surprised if ‘Great Expectations’ is not Elms’s favourite Dickens novel. An early Magwitch reference alerts us to the possibility, but a later scene convinces us. Elms describes taking his mum to a Japanese restaurant ‘when I was doing all right, making a few bob, living in a flat in Bloomsbury and pretending I’d had a sophisticated palette all along’. It’s his ‘Joe Gargery moment’, one that ‘turned him into Pip’. And throughout ‘London Made Us’ there is a sense of Robert Elms as Pip, ‘educated beyond his station’, torn between the Forge of Burnt Oak and cutting-edge London.
Throughout there is a sense of Elms, like the mature narrator of ‘Great Expectations’, casting a guilt-ridden backwards glance at his errant youthful behaviour. It is, though, a little inconsistent. He may talk of his fondness for ‘silly haircuts’ and the ‘preposterous poetry’ with which he introduced Spandau Ballet at one of their first gigs, but he can also tell us that ‘all I wanted was to be a face about town’ or refer to himself as an ‘urban elitist’ with no accompanying ironic judgement.
Elms’s love for his city is profound. Equally apparent is his love for language. He’s a linguistic barrow-boy, hawking his verbal wares, foisting on us three phrases where one would do. He’s unable to resist the rhythmic trick, the wise-guy gag, the lure of alliteration or the look-at-me flourish. Hence – ‘our harshly polyglot peripherique’, ‘this all-pervading, all-providing, all-devouring behemoth of a birthright’, ‘this bright and shiny (or maybe shite and briny) twenty-first century Babylon’,‘ a rollicking redoubt of totters and tearaways’.
When it comes to London, though, Robert Elms knows his stuff and ‘London Made Us’ is a great read. His memories are personal and heartfelt, his knowledge hugely impressive. His love of the city is profound, and, as he takes you on a tour of his life and manor, he proves to be great company, even if you sometimes feel trapped in the back of his sherbet with your ears under assault.
‘London Made Us’ is about the city’s ever-changing nature, its refusal to stay as we remember it. It’s also about loss, something with which, as a fellow QPR fan, Robert Elms is very familiar There is so much here that strikes a chord. Not least the claim that the greatest ever London song is ‘Debris’.
June 16, 2020
An engaging memoir about life in London in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, discussing themes such as working class culture, the rise of restaurants and the alternative arts scene. Elms is the host of a long running BBC London radio show and has a great love of London and a lot of knowledge about its social history and mythology. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is about how food and dining changed in London over the course of the author's lifetime as he vividly remembers his first dish of Indian food and his first kebab (at a restaurant owned by George Michael's father). There is a strong theme of nostalgia and the author even makes a case for being nostalgic about long queues for special events (the atmosphere of collective excitement in these queues) The audiobook is enthusiastically read by the author.
May 29, 2023
A must read for any Londoner! Super fascinating to read about the city that once was and now is.
November 22, 2019
Having thoroughly enjoyed Robert Elms' touching and wonderfully written autobiography The Way We Wore, I felt confident I would also enjoy London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City, and so it proved.
If you lived through the 70s, 80s and 90s, and if you spent some of that time in London then I can virtually guarantee you'll find a lot to enjoy within this book. Part memoir, part social history, Elms takes us on a tour of the London of his youth and that of his forebears with reference to the city of today.
His unapologetic cheerleading for his favourite city and home town can get a bit wearing, but perhaps that's because I fled the place and have no regrets, something he would never be able to comprehend. However it's as a trip down memory lane and as an entertaining history lesson that this book really succeeds. I loved it.
4/5
If you lived through the 70s, 80s and 90s, and if you spent some of that time in London then I can virtually guarantee you'll find a lot to enjoy within this book. Part memoir, part social history, Elms takes us on a tour of the London of his youth and that of his forebears with reference to the city of today.
His unapologetic cheerleading for his favourite city and home town can get a bit wearing, but perhaps that's because I fled the place and have no regrets, something he would never be able to comprehend. However it's as a trip down memory lane and as an entertaining history lesson that this book really succeeds. I loved it.
4/5
June 29, 2020
This was a good read and I would recommend it with the following caveat- Robert Elms is a narcissist and his smugness does make it's way into these pages (plenty of name dropping, and I was there first before gentrification shtick). In terms of the people he writes about, forget the celebrities (yes Robert, you dated Sade no need to keep mentioning it) and his constant talk about being a member of the Groucho Club, the best character he writes about is his mother who is the real deal in terms of being a card carrying Londoner. His own memoir is also a good read, albeit with the same aforementioned caveats.
June 11, 2023
This is quite a satisfying read. I was put off Elms before I'd even listened to him by someone telling me how annoying he was, but then he was rehabilitated in my mind a few years later by an American of all people.
He definitely buffs up his Londoner credentials at every opportunity and I don't really believe some of his schtick, but when all's said and done, he connects a lot of people's stories, through his radio show, and his take on London actually feels like a sort of living pop-culture history of the capital, packed with fascinating and entertaining nuggets.
He definitely buffs up his Londoner credentials at every opportunity and I don't really believe some of his schtick, but when all's said and done, he connects a lot of people's stories, through his radio show, and his take on London actually feels like a sort of living pop-culture history of the capital, packed with fascinating and entertaining nuggets.
April 22, 2019
I could hear Robert’s voice throughout this book, being an avid listener to his BBC Radio London radio show. The book is a gentle ramble through his family’s past in the city but I must admit I was hoping for more detail.
For someone who doesn’t listen to his radio show and is therefore not familiar with many of the nuggets of information he imparts on a daily basis, this book will be revelatory. I was just hoping for more family history and detail. That said, it’s been a lovely Easter read.
For someone who doesn’t listen to his radio show and is therefore not familiar with many of the nuggets of information he imparts on a daily basis, this book will be revelatory. I was just hoping for more family history and detail. That said, it’s been a lovely Easter read.
December 6, 2019
I'd give this 10 stars if it were possible.
September 3, 2020
No matter how fantastic a book might be -- and no mistake, this one qualifies -- I have a rule that demands the docking of a rating star for any book that refers to CBGB as CBGBs. Really sorry, but rules are rules [and vice versa].
February 7, 2020
Maybe it's because...
June 3, 2019
Blitzed kid: Robert Elms’s paean to his home town veers occasionally into Maybe-it’s-becawse-a-I’m-a-Londoner sentimentality, though mostly he keeps this in (Prince of Wales) check. Elms burnished his credentials as a pop-social historian with The Way We Wore, which was basically him flicking through the contents of his wardrobes whilst telling stories, and London Made Us is cut of much the same cloth.
This works for me - and maybe others too - because I’m from here. I can remember at infant school (Redmans Road, Stepney, since you ask, gentle reader) that we played on the ‘day-bree’ (debris), the wartime spoil next to our school similar to sites that pockmarked the face of London as late as the 70s, and that this wasn’t strictly allowed and would lead to a telling-off in assembly next day from Miss Storey. Not that this was particularly frightening, for, as my mother remarked, “by the time they leave for primary they’re usually a foot taller than her.” Or the Dolphinarium in Oxford St - yes, really, somewhere near where Primark now is at the Tottenham Court Road end if I’ve followed Elms’s directions correctly and which I’d wondered about for years. I had a strong memory of such a trip from Redmans Road: not of the dolphins, which I can’t remember a thing about, but because my mother, having unusually failed to follow instructions, had furnished me not with a packed lunch but only a bag of crisps (Golden Wonder salt and vinegar), and having wolfed these within 10 minutes of the coach departing, I was miserably hungry for what seemed like eternity. Such is the stuff legends are made of. But I could never picture the dolphinarium itself and the coach journey for a class of six year olds couldn’t have been that far, so it remained a mystery until now. (The Oxford Street Dolphinarium opened in 1970, and closed following a fire three years later, so the timing is about right. Don’t worry, the dolphins were unharmed - although maybe their mental health wasn’t so rosy after three years in a disgracefully small paddling pool doing degrading tricks for an audience of shrieking cockney urchins.) But whether any non-Londoners will be as enthralled by Dr Robert’s prodigious feats of memory is another matter - rather like Dave Haslam’s Mancy memoir last year, you probably had to be there, at least partly. (Thanks also for Gamage’s, Mr E: another Clarke family favourite, mainly due to Jackie the mynah bird on the first floor.)
Elms can’t be accused of wearing his knowledge lightly - he’s a blue badge guide crossed with a London cabbie and you’re not allowed to forget it. At nigh on 300 pages there’s a lot of history, mythology (urban and personal), and mystery, in densely packed pages (I got to 288 and a low moan escaped me when I saw ‘postscript’ to follow). And he’s got a few Maconiesque ticks inherited from the inky rock weeklies - characters are all too often introduced as “one” as in “one Robert Elms” and there are many variants of “aforementioned”, which always makes my buttocks clench. In places it’s more labour than love, but mostly his utter passion for the Smoke blows through, and well, it’s lovely actually.
This works for me - and maybe others too - because I’m from here. I can remember at infant school (Redmans Road, Stepney, since you ask, gentle reader) that we played on the ‘day-bree’ (debris), the wartime spoil next to our school similar to sites that pockmarked the face of London as late as the 70s, and that this wasn’t strictly allowed and would lead to a telling-off in assembly next day from Miss Storey. Not that this was particularly frightening, for, as my mother remarked, “by the time they leave for primary they’re usually a foot taller than her.” Or the Dolphinarium in Oxford St - yes, really, somewhere near where Primark now is at the Tottenham Court Road end if I’ve followed Elms’s directions correctly and which I’d wondered about for years. I had a strong memory of such a trip from Redmans Road: not of the dolphins, which I can’t remember a thing about, but because my mother, having unusually failed to follow instructions, had furnished me not with a packed lunch but only a bag of crisps (Golden Wonder salt and vinegar), and having wolfed these within 10 minutes of the coach departing, I was miserably hungry for what seemed like eternity. Such is the stuff legends are made of. But I could never picture the dolphinarium itself and the coach journey for a class of six year olds couldn’t have been that far, so it remained a mystery until now. (The Oxford Street Dolphinarium opened in 1970, and closed following a fire three years later, so the timing is about right. Don’t worry, the dolphins were unharmed - although maybe their mental health wasn’t so rosy after three years in a disgracefully small paddling pool doing degrading tricks for an audience of shrieking cockney urchins.) But whether any non-Londoners will be as enthralled by Dr Robert’s prodigious feats of memory is another matter - rather like Dave Haslam’s Mancy memoir last year, you probably had to be there, at least partly. (Thanks also for Gamage’s, Mr E: another Clarke family favourite, mainly due to Jackie the mynah bird on the first floor.)
Elms can’t be accused of wearing his knowledge lightly - he’s a blue badge guide crossed with a London cabbie and you’re not allowed to forget it. At nigh on 300 pages there’s a lot of history, mythology (urban and personal), and mystery, in densely packed pages (I got to 288 and a low moan escaped me when I saw ‘postscript’ to follow). And he’s got a few Maconiesque ticks inherited from the inky rock weeklies - characters are all too often introduced as “one” as in “one Robert Elms” and there are many variants of “aforementioned”, which always makes my buttocks clench. In places it’s more labour than love, but mostly his utter passion for the Smoke blows through, and well, it’s lovely actually.
May 8, 2024
[2020] This is a great little book, a memoir about the life of the author growing up in west London. It is beautifully written, with precise sparkling prose. It is constantly surprising you with different angles, reflections, observations and thoughts. He describes a London through his eyes from the early 1960s to the present time. Much of it deeply personal and emotional and it really makes you think as much of his reflections of change are applicable to the wider-country. Like most people - who don't live in London and with no disrespect, I had never heard of him as I have no reason to listen to BBC Radio London, but that didn't seem to matter as I felt he was talking to me above the heads of his undoubtedly loyal listeners.
Having spent my younger years in South London, I really appreciated much of what he was saying and it had an impact on me. I loved his observations and his remarkable memory. Where it came slightly unstuck for me and where it clanged a bit was his obvious left-wing perspective. Although, of course, nothing wrong with that and I'm not sure if its me, but I find people who have left wing views also seem to have a sense of moral superiority over those who don't share them. There was the usual left-wing credo of the EU, mass immigration, multiculturalism, diversity, etc is totally good while Thatcherism and Brexit is totally bad. He used the term 'Little England' as a disparaging remark for those who didn't share his world view.
I was left with the conundrum that he appears to have a blind-spot in his polemical thought to a lost London. Some of what he mourns - the community cohesion, the multifarious pubs, the old-London boozers, the sense of Cockney-pride, the Cockney rhyming slang, the shared experiences, the shared culture, has in actual fact been partly obliterated by the left-wing policy of mass immigration from across the world. Presumably policies that Robert Elms supports and votes for. The London of old has in effect been rubbed out and re-painted in the image of the 50% foreign born population, aided and abetted by a dominant enclave of the socialist middle-class that have colonised North West London. If the old London boozers have closed partly as a result of the fact that one million non-drinking Muslims now live in London. I'd suggest that when next the sense of lost pervades his mind and floods his memory with scenes of London past, that he reflects on how 600,000 white Londoners left in a decade to set up London in Essex or Kent (Go to Basildon or Sittingbourne to 'feel' London) and the rest of the Country increasing think of their capital as an alien place where no 'actual' Londoners live. Perhaps this is a eulogy to 'be careful what you vote for'.
All that said it was a really great read and throughly enjoyable.
Having spent my younger years in South London, I really appreciated much of what he was saying and it had an impact on me. I loved his observations and his remarkable memory. Where it came slightly unstuck for me and where it clanged a bit was his obvious left-wing perspective. Although, of course, nothing wrong with that and I'm not sure if its me, but I find people who have left wing views also seem to have a sense of moral superiority over those who don't share them. There was the usual left-wing credo of the EU, mass immigration, multiculturalism, diversity, etc is totally good while Thatcherism and Brexit is totally bad. He used the term 'Little England' as a disparaging remark for those who didn't share his world view.
I was left with the conundrum that he appears to have a blind-spot in his polemical thought to a lost London. Some of what he mourns - the community cohesion, the multifarious pubs, the old-London boozers, the sense of Cockney-pride, the Cockney rhyming slang, the shared experiences, the shared culture, has in actual fact been partly obliterated by the left-wing policy of mass immigration from across the world. Presumably policies that Robert Elms supports and votes for. The London of old has in effect been rubbed out and re-painted in the image of the 50% foreign born population, aided and abetted by a dominant enclave of the socialist middle-class that have colonised North West London. If the old London boozers have closed partly as a result of the fact that one million non-drinking Muslims now live in London. I'd suggest that when next the sense of lost pervades his mind and floods his memory with scenes of London past, that he reflects on how 600,000 white Londoners left in a decade to set up London in Essex or Kent (Go to Basildon or Sittingbourne to 'feel' London) and the rest of the Country increasing think of their capital as an alien place where no 'actual' Londoners live. Perhaps this is a eulogy to 'be careful what you vote for'.
All that said it was a really great read and throughly enjoyable.
April 2, 2021
SUMMARY - Psychogeography with a heart, which is as much about the 'us' as about London.
Elms namechecks Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, and following in such admired footsteps, I would have shared his prediction that these would be hard acts to follow. Aware of the erudite scholarship in these other authors' works, however, Elms plays to his strengths.
Early on, Elms recounts how standing outside UCL hospital, an anonymous London cabbie recognises him (Elms is also a radio presenter), and on learning his mother is likely to die soon, offers his hand for support and condolence. Beyond the family connections, Elms writes with an evidently heartfelt love for London, and concomitant anger at how ordinary Londoners have been evicted to the margins by recent generations of speculators. This is the sort of layered book I love in turn, marrying arcania and trivia (on the 1970s punk scene, or the demimonde of Soho in its glory days) with a well-developed set of insights into how London has dislocated those like his parents, whose move to Burnt Oak reflects a wider loss of the lifeblood of central London.
Elms bemoans the parasitical growth of (oxymoronic) luxury flats, and the increasing sterilising influence of bland multinational corporations flogging Union-Jacked tat to bored tourists. It's then a little harder to swallow his claim that London remains the greatest city on earth, even though I also wouldn't necessarily dispute it. Is it really better than Berlin, or perhaps even provincial cities that have more of the urban lifeblood of creativity that Elms mourns? The claim might have been better avoided altogether, as without it we still would have understood Elms's unwavering fidelity to London.
Much against my expectations, this book went deeper than psychogeography. It was certainly learned, and it certainly understood how places within London have their own identities. But it also had heart, as a very personal tale that managed to connect a very personal and autobiographical story of belonging in the city, that went beyond QPR, stuccoed Camden, and his family roots in Victorian Pimlico, to the teeming organism of Londoners as a whole.
Elms namechecks Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, and following in such admired footsteps, I would have shared his prediction that these would be hard acts to follow. Aware of the erudite scholarship in these other authors' works, however, Elms plays to his strengths.
Early on, Elms recounts how standing outside UCL hospital, an anonymous London cabbie recognises him (Elms is also a radio presenter), and on learning his mother is likely to die soon, offers his hand for support and condolence. Beyond the family connections, Elms writes with an evidently heartfelt love for London, and concomitant anger at how ordinary Londoners have been evicted to the margins by recent generations of speculators. This is the sort of layered book I love in turn, marrying arcania and trivia (on the 1970s punk scene, or the demimonde of Soho in its glory days) with a well-developed set of insights into how London has dislocated those like his parents, whose move to Burnt Oak reflects a wider loss of the lifeblood of central London.
Elms bemoans the parasitical growth of (oxymoronic) luxury flats, and the increasing sterilising influence of bland multinational corporations flogging Union-Jacked tat to bored tourists. It's then a little harder to swallow his claim that London remains the greatest city on earth, even though I also wouldn't necessarily dispute it. Is it really better than Berlin, or perhaps even provincial cities that have more of the urban lifeblood of creativity that Elms mourns? The claim might have been better avoided altogether, as without it we still would have understood Elms's unwavering fidelity to London.
Much against my expectations, this book went deeper than psychogeography. It was certainly learned, and it certainly understood how places within London have their own identities. But it also had heart, as a very personal tale that managed to connect a very personal and autobiographical story of belonging in the city, that went beyond QPR, stuccoed Camden, and his family roots in Victorian Pimlico, to the teeming organism of Londoners as a whole.
Read
August 28, 2024To borrow a phrase; if you were to cut Robert Elms in half it would read ‘London’ all the way through. This book is part-memoir, part-history/geographical/cultural guide, and entirely a love letter to London. The author has traced his family back to the late C19th and imagines great-grandfather 'Little Freddie' Elms walking from the far reaches of Uxbridge to find his fortune in West London, the Ladbroke Grove & North Kensington/Notting Dale (who knew!) area. Several generations of street traders later and the slum clearance and the imposition of the horrible Westway flyover led the young Robert and family to move to a shiny new estate in Burnt Oak. The bulk of the book is about RE trying to get back to the centre and find ‘his’ London. He is nostalgic for some of the rougher parts of the city with the creative energy, the unreconstructed neighbourhoods, pre-gentrified melting pot of exotic characters, waves of immigrants, students, poseurs & gangsters … exemplified by the old SoHo, before Paul Raymond and the money and the tourists moved in. I can forgive the author his self-indulgence to tell his-story, and have a grudging respect for his desire to live city life to the full. Although of a similar generation and socio-economic group, I fled the bland suburbs as soon as possible and have now all-but lost my ties to Laarden; expect maybe a soft 'estuary English' accent.
Lastly, in a slightly more reflective and metaphysical section about the former St.Giles slum area (‘rookery’) which includes the Tyburn gallows, he imagines a persistence spirit of the place, not entirely lost under the relentless onslaught of new building overground and underground (Crossrail/Elizabeth Line). This reminded me of ‘Lady Ty(burn)’ and the Rivers of London series … Ben Aaronivitch’s homage to an ever-changing city with ancient roots and endless stories.
Lastly, in a slightly more reflective and metaphysical section about the former St.Giles slum area (‘rookery’) which includes the Tyburn gallows, he imagines a persistence spirit of the place, not entirely lost under the relentless onslaught of new building overground and underground (Crossrail/Elizabeth Line). This reminded me of ‘Lady Ty(burn)’ and the Rivers of London series … Ben Aaronivitch’s homage to an ever-changing city with ancient roots and endless stories.
October 11, 2022
I did enjoy listening to this. As a Londoner the descriptions of the city resonated with me although I do think I may have missed out by not experiencing the clubbing scene over the years, which the author describes so imaginatively.
London is definitely a shape shifting city and the way the city changes is so rapid. Blink and you will miss it. I have lost count of the times I have encountered a new shop, cafe, restaurant, block of flats, which have left me wondering whether I was asleep when the new development happened.
I live in North London and I am amazed at the building developments that are taking place in the area. A visit to Tottenham Hale recently left me astounded at the blocks of expensive flats that are being built and the price of these properties is well beyond the reach of most local people. The City Hall that I once used to work in now lies empty at the moment because the Mayor of London and his team have moved East. When I travel East to visit friends and family I am astounded by the new tower blocks, cafes and new incoming populations who are a real contrast to the traditional East end communities.
The pace of change, the wealth which some enjoy, the communities who are arriving, the ones who are leaving, all flow together in one unending stream of change. The author manages to capture this in his writing. His book is a great book which would make a fascinating documentary. It put into words what so many Londoners feel.
London is definitely a shape shifting city and the way the city changes is so rapid. Blink and you will miss it. I have lost count of the times I have encountered a new shop, cafe, restaurant, block of flats, which have left me wondering whether I was asleep when the new development happened.
I live in North London and I am amazed at the building developments that are taking place in the area. A visit to Tottenham Hale recently left me astounded at the blocks of expensive flats that are being built and the price of these properties is well beyond the reach of most local people. The City Hall that I once used to work in now lies empty at the moment because the Mayor of London and his team have moved East. When I travel East to visit friends and family I am astounded by the new tower blocks, cafes and new incoming populations who are a real contrast to the traditional East end communities.
The pace of change, the wealth which some enjoy, the communities who are arriving, the ones who are leaving, all flow together in one unending stream of change. The author manages to capture this in his writing. His book is a great book which would make a fascinating documentary. It put into words what so many Londoners feel.
December 31, 2022
Nostalgic AF. A good read, entertaining. A deep incentive to learn more about this city that is still new to me but feels so omnipresent. I’ve called London home for 5 years now and somehow Elms talks about most of the far flung neighborhoods I’ve haunted in that time. Soho is still the heart. I’d have given 4 stars but I had to Google so many names, establishments, cockney terms, and other random things in order to understand the tome that it extended the time needed to enjoy it by 4x. I learned a lot. I won’t retain most of the names. Tbh a good portion of the book felt like name dropping (whether expired brands or history based lore), and eventually the frequency of this practice led to me not looking all of them up and just making some narrative up in my head of the unknown names. Mind you, if I had grown up in this country I perhaps would have been familiar with more. But I’d argue I would be less likely to buy the book in that case due to the cover looking like an ad for the tourism board… anyway, I really enjoyed the read despite the many detours to look up some forgotten lore of the city that is too easy to fall in love with, “perpetually renewing and to all intents inexhaustible”.
May 16, 2022
This was a fantastic read. I've long been enamored of English history and the history of cities, so this was a nice mashup. I thoroughly enjoyed Elms's other book The Way We Wore about British street fashion, so this was a treat, too.
What I liked most about this book is the idea that every person has their own London, based on their lived experiences, and that the map is ever-growing and changing. Many of Elms' musings about the shifting of a city is how I have felt about Portland, OR, my adopted city. When I was a young man, I loved the night and the invitation of the darkness to adventure as well as danger. City life was gritty, unpredictable, sometimes scandalous, sometimes messy, but almost always fun.
Elms remarks that as London became a more popular tourist destination, it lost its edge in the clinical corporate land grab. He says that London lost much of what made it so special to him. I get that and feel similarly about my former gritty punk rock city.
I might have liked this book so much because he put into words what I have felt as I have gotten older. Whatever the case, Elms is a great writer and storyteller. This book is great fun for city romantics.
What I liked most about this book is the idea that every person has their own London, based on their lived experiences, and that the map is ever-growing and changing. Many of Elms' musings about the shifting of a city is how I have felt about Portland, OR, my adopted city. When I was a young man, I loved the night and the invitation of the darkness to adventure as well as danger. City life was gritty, unpredictable, sometimes scandalous, sometimes messy, but almost always fun.
Elms remarks that as London became a more popular tourist destination, it lost its edge in the clinical corporate land grab. He says that London lost much of what made it so special to him. I get that and feel similarly about my former gritty punk rock city.
I might have liked this book so much because he put into words what I have felt as I have gotten older. Whatever the case, Elms is a great writer and storyteller. This book is great fun for city romantics.
March 27, 2019
There was so much in this book which was familiar to me. I became a Londoner when I came to London at the age of 16. I lived in a grotty staff hostel in Gants Hill and worked in a horrible job in Walthamstow. It was 1968 and I was both excited an scared shitless. I quickly changed jobs, spending the next 10 years working in Piccadilly at Fortnums and managing a shop in Old Compton St.
The places and faces Robert described were exactly as I saw them. Maybe I remember more about the clubs and pubs described when they were in previous incarnations...like the Soho Brasserie when it was The Helvetia. I remember having a few drinks with an American guy called Mike who was waiting for his wife to finish work across the road. (It was Twiggy and she was playing Cinderella).
I went to many of the live music pubs Robert wrote about and a few years later my son played football for Watling.
Both my sons and my wife have worked in the Holborn/Clerkenwell area for decades now and my brother still lives and runs his business in Doughty St.
I bought this for my kindle but it's a book that needs to be in my bookshelf.
Derek
The places and faces Robert described were exactly as I saw them. Maybe I remember more about the clubs and pubs described when they were in previous incarnations...like the Soho Brasserie when it was The Helvetia. I remember having a few drinks with an American guy called Mike who was waiting for his wife to finish work across the road. (It was Twiggy and she was playing Cinderella).
I went to many of the live music pubs Robert wrote about and a few years later my son played football for Watling.
Both my sons and my wife have worked in the Holborn/Clerkenwell area for decades now and my brother still lives and runs his business in Doughty St.
I bought this for my kindle but it's a book that needs to be in my bookshelf.
Derek
November 10, 2021
I didn't expect to enjoy this one as much as I did!
I confess that I'd never heard about Robert Elms or his radio show but when I saw this on the list of audiobooks available at my local library, the word London picked my interest and the good ratings here on GR made me choose this one (and the audiobook is narrated by Elms himself!)
I've been living in London for quite some years and not sure if I consider myself a Londoner. But I have lived through some of the events described (the social unrest which led to lootings in 2011, the fire at Grenfell tower...) and I could recognize several places & roads. London is a melting pot and a meeting point, but somehow now I do have a sense of community in my neighbourhood.
My favourite chapter was the one about the local Portuguese shop in Camden (of course!).
Listening to this got me interested into reading more about this city!
I confess that I'd never heard about Robert Elms or his radio show but when I saw this on the list of audiobooks available at my local library, the word London picked my interest and the good ratings here on GR made me choose this one (and the audiobook is narrated by Elms himself!)
I've been living in London for quite some years and not sure if I consider myself a Londoner. But I have lived through some of the events described (the social unrest which led to lootings in 2011, the fire at Grenfell tower...) and I could recognize several places & roads. London is a melting pot and a meeting point, but somehow now I do have a sense of community in my neighbourhood.
My favourite chapter was the one about the local Portuguese shop in Camden (of course!).
Listening to this got me interested into reading more about this city!
February 11, 2022
Robert Elms has been writing and talking about London for most of his career. His daily radio show (now sadly reduced to 3 days a week) was a must listen for anyone who loves the history and culture of this wonderful city (the place I’ve called home now for over half my life).
Elms has a very distinct way with words when he’s on the radio and this also comes across in this book - a sort of memoir cum love letter to the city. He mourns the disappeared London of his youth whilst recognising that time has to march on. His parents also found the London they grew up in different to the one he remembers. That is both the curse and blessing of the Capital. I feel the same - I sometimes long for aspects of London that I remember fondly from when I first moved here, whilst recognising that much has changed for the better.
Anyone who loves London will love this book.
Elms has a very distinct way with words when he’s on the radio and this also comes across in this book - a sort of memoir cum love letter to the city. He mourns the disappeared London of his youth whilst recognising that time has to march on. His parents also found the London they grew up in different to the one he remembers. That is both the curse and blessing of the Capital. I feel the same - I sometimes long for aspects of London that I remember fondly from when I first moved here, whilst recognising that much has changed for the better.
Anyone who loves London will love this book.
October 12, 2021
As a regular listener (and contributor) to Robert Elms's Radio London show, I was keen to get hold of his book. Robert has a very conversational and accessible writing style, which relates well to his radio presentation. It is highly personal book about his relationship with London, packed full of interesting anecdotes and historical facts which make a change form the norm. Robert has often been referred to as 'Mister London', and he is a Londoner born and bred.
For me this book is up there with all the greats, Ackroyd, Betjeman, Nairn. If you want to get a different and absorbing view of the World's greatest city , then this is the book to get.
For me this book is up there with all the greats, Ackroyd, Betjeman, Nairn. If you want to get a different and absorbing view of the World's greatest city , then this is the book to get.
February 2, 2025
Very enjoyable. I grew up hearing about much of what Elms describes, but, not being in London, didn't see any of it. I also felt quite comforted that my feeling of London, especially at night in the late 70's into the 80's as a somewhat dangerous place for us outsiders, was somewhat confirmed. What I most enjoyed was this idea that London is ever changing and what we as outsiders don't really notice is felt keenly and perhaps painfully by those who truly call it home. Beautifully written, perhaps rather too many adjectives in use, but a great personal recollection of many decades on the front line of life in "the smoke".
February 7, 2022
A thoroughly enjoyable romp through the ever changing city that is London. Filled with amusing anecdotes and interesting historical titbits, this was also eminently relatable. I enjoyed the name-checks of the various places that I'd been when growing up, and instantly recognised the city he describes, as well as the changes that have been wrought down the years. Amusing and serious in sufficiently equal measure, it offers a fabulous insight into a London that was, is, and (possibly) will be. Enjoy.
February 6, 2022
I am slightly older than Robert Elms and grew up in an Essex suburb but I wondered if our paths ever crossed. I remember many of the places and events he writes about. I started jotting down notes on “my London”. I would have liked a lexicon to help me interpret some of the rhyming slang and I had never heard of “Camberwell Carrot” as a term for the produce of a friend’s garden in Camberwell. There must be a term for the joy of nostalgia.
July 2, 2022
This book was about london from the perspective of someone born and raised there. I’m around same age as the author and remember some of the places he writes about. However, I didn’t have such a rosy coloured memory of some of it but as they say the past is another country. That estate of youth particularly gives a golden glow to the past. Liked the memories , thought it was too long and got a bit cheesed off in places about the politics.
June 3, 2020
Brilliant!!! I couldn't put it down. I am a huge Robert Elms fan and have listened to his radio show for years. His passion for London never wanes and the stories he tells are full of colour and life. I will definitely be reading it again!
June 28, 2022
If you’ve ever lived in and loved this city, do read this wonderful book.
Filled with memorabilia, interesting facts and statements every Londoner will identify with.
Guarantee you’ll smile & chuckle along the way!
Filled with memorabilia, interesting facts and statements every Londoner will identify with.
Guarantee you’ll smile & chuckle along the way!
September 15, 2022
I enjoy books about London and London life and this is one of the most enjoyable ones I've read for some time.
Some great stories and anecdotes from the author recalling his childhood and charting his progress through life with London as the backdrop.
Some great stories and anecdotes from the author recalling his childhood and charting his progress through life with London as the backdrop.
August 8, 2021
Loved it. A book to read more than once.
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