A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London

by Patrick Wright

Overview

A unique evocation of Britain at the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule, A Journey Through Ruins views the transformation of the country through the unexpected prism of every day life in East London. Written at a time when the looming but still unfinished tower of Canary Wharf was still wrapped in protective blue plastic, its cast of characters includes council tenants trapped in disintegrating tower blocks, depressed gentrifiers worrying about negative equity, metal detectorists, sharp-eyed estate agents and management consultants, and even Prince Charles. Written half a century after the blitz, the book reviews the rise and fall of the London of the post-war settlement. It remains one of the very best accounts of what it was like to live through the Thatcher years. This reissue includes a new introduction revisiting the book's East End starting point in Dalston Lane, four additional chapters, and an insert of photographs taken in and around Dalston in the year of the book's first appearance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199541942
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/22/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	428
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Patrick Wright is the author of a number of highly acclaimed best-selling history books, including The Village that Died for England, Tank (described by Simon Schama as "a tour de force"), and Iron Curtain (which John le Carre called "a work of wit, style and waggish erudition").

Table of Contents

Going Back to Dalston: Preface to the Oxford EditionPart One: The Undemolished World of Dalston Lane1. Street-Corner Vision2. Around the World in Three Hundred Yards3. All Cats are Grey by Night4. Down in the Dirt5. Dalston Lane Becomes a Downland TrackPart Two: Brideshead and the Tower Blocks6. Brideshead Relocated7. Abysmal Heights8. Rodinsky's Place9. An Unexpected ReprievePart Three: Scenes from the Privatized City10. The London Bus Queue Falls Apart11. The Vandalized Telephone Box12. The Man with a Metal Detector13. Drinking Water in a Toxic StatePart Four: Tales of Conversion14. The Park that Lost its Name15. Remembering London's War16. The Bow Quarter: Six Hundred and Seventy Luxury Flats in an Old Victorian Hell-HousePart Five: Visions of the New Dawn17. Excellence: From Fifth Avenue to Hackney Town Hall18. Refounding the City with Prince CharlesAfterwards...19. Down Among the Gentrifiers20. Brick Lane's Day of Killing21. A Night to Remember22. Don Giovanni (and Business Planning) Come to the Hackney Empire23. Siraj Izhar's public lavatoryNotesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Essential reading."—D

"Astute and imaginative....An immensly heartening book....Here is a city dweller with the gusto of Baudelaire and the eye of Jane Jacobs who, undeterred, enjoys the chaotic humanity, the ironic architectural juxtapositions, the espirit de jeu of late twentieth century London."—David Widgery, Independent on Sunday

"Sheer good writing, sense and humanity."—Andrew Saint, Times Literary Supplement

"A funny and perceptive book which is part oral history and part journalism, part generalization and part scholarship—an intriguing and attractive amalgam."—Peter Ackroyd, The Times (UK)

"There is no space in a short review to give more than a hint of the intellectual delights of this book. Witty, well written and superbly stimulating, it is a must for everybody's reading list."—Victor Belcher, English Heritage Magazine

"Patrick Wright is a wandering, disestablished scholar whose method is to walk and talk."—Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books

"This is a formidable polemic that describes a realist's vision of a Britain under private affluence amid public squalor."—Matthew Bray, Financial Times

"Patrick Wright is an incisive thinker, a man of laudable principles and a skilful writer of punchy journalistic prose."—Charles Bourne, Hempstead & Highgate Express

"Wright belongs in a select club of literary sleuths who have imagined London as a labyrinth of strange affinities....A pin-sharp miniaturist who can see the world in a grain of sand."—Boyd Tonkin, Observer (UK)

From the Publisher