London book gift guide 2022
Part one: Non-fiction
At the end of November 2021, we went back through our archives and compiled a list of all the non-fiction books written by the brilliant people we’d been lucky to talk to and work with during the first nine months of our existence.
We’ve removed the paywall from that issue if you want to go and take a look. There’s some great books in there:
People seemed to enjoy that and, as we’ve met even more amazing writers over the course of 2022, we’ve made a new list for this year to give you a bit of nudge as you're buying your Christmas presents (or compiling your own list).
Just like last year, there’s no Amazon links in here and we don’t make any money from any of these recommendations. Where possible we’ve linked to the publisher’s site and/or Bookshop.org.
London is a Forest - Paul Wood
Paul Wood is, of course, the man behind our quarterly column Tales From the Urban Forest. But before he began writing about all things flora and fauna for us, he was mapping London’s forest trails and exploring the stories and secrets of its trees in his gorgeous book, London is a Forest (the title comes from the fact that there are 8.5 million trees in just 600 square miles of London).
A new edition of the book came out earlier this year, which includes a new trail that goes from Harrow to St Pancras via Ealing, Acton and Notting Hill. You can pick up a signed copy on Paul’s website or an unsigned copy on Bookshop.org.
And while we’re here, we should mention that Paul’s Great Trees of London map is still available from Blue Crow.
Behind the Shop Facade: The Life of Maurice Dorfman - Jim Grover
In April we went to Clapham Library to see Behind the Shop Facade, a really beautiful and touching exhibition put together by local documentary photographer, Jim Grover. The exhibition told the story of Maurice ‘Murray’ Dorfman, who ran a haberdashery and dressmakers on Clapham High Street for over sixty years.
To accompany the exhibition, Jim created a 230 page book that tells the incredible story of how a grandson of refugees from Western Ukraine came to mean so much to the community of Clapham. Alongside memories and stories from more than 60 people who knew Murray, there’s dozens of photographs, some from the old Kodachrome slides and Cine Film discovered in Maurice’s flat after he died, some taken by Jim himself (including incredible images of Maurice’s ‘time capsule’ of a flat, which was situated above the shop).
The book is available from the Behind the Shop Facade website for £46.90 (or you can buy the digital version on memory stick for £14.25).
Defying Gravity - Cathi Unsworth
No offence to everyone else we’ve spoken to this year, but our interview with Cathi Unsworth might be our favourite interview of 2022:
As well as being whip smart and very funny, Cathi is also a brilliant writer, and Defying Gravity, the book that she wrote with Pamela Rooke (aka punk icon, Jordan) is one of the most beautifully told, unfailingly honest memoirs we’ve read in a long time. As well as telling the story of how a little girl from Seaford became the ‘fearless Britannia of Punk’ it’s also a fascinating, alternative history of West London.
If you know someone who watched Danny Boyle’s Pistol and thought that was the full story, then buy them this book. It will blow their minds.
You can buy Defying Gravity via Bookshop.org for £10.44. Or, if you want something really special, there’s a £100 special edition, which includes a copy of the book hand signed by Jordan, a specially designed poster and a T-shirt.
Out of Space: How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture - Jim Ottewill
Just a few weeks ago we spoke to freelance music journalist Jim Ottewill about his first book, Out of Space - How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture and how London’s club scene was built and how it might survive.
Jim’s book isn’t purely about London, but there’s a whole chapter in there dedicated to the history of London’s club scene and the people who shaped it, and if you know someone who still sheds a tear every time they walk past the spot where Turnmills used to be, then they’ll love this one.
You can get Out of Space in paperback for £11.99 direct from Velocity Press.
Or from Bookshop.org for £14.24.
Broken Yard The Fall of the Metropolitan Police - Tom Harper
It’s all too easy to feel a sense of fatigue when it comes to reading about the Metropolitan police. God knows, we get tired of writing about them sometimes. So why would someone want to read a book-length “account of corruption, racism and mismanagement inside Britain’s most famous police force”?
Well, for a start. Tom Harper is a great writer who uses his experience as an investigative reporter to uncover the essential threads and then tie them together into a searing narrative that places the ‘fall of the Met’ into a broader historical context. In doing so, Tom manages to craft a balanced and (almost) hopeful story out of an unholy mess of corruption, ineptitude and systemic failure.
As he told us when we interviewed him in October, “I care very much about the police and all my contacts are police officers who also care about the force and are worried about where it’s gone to in these last few years.”
You can buy Broken Yard in hardback, direct from Biteback Publishing for £20.00.
Or from Bookshop.org for £19.00.
London Street Signs - Alistair Hall
We always enjoy talking to anyone who makes us look at London differently. The kind of people who help us to not take the city for granted, and can find new kinds of beauty in the everyday.
Alistair Hall is one of those people. When we spoke to him for a ‘Where Do You Go?’ issue in the summer, he talked about turning his fascination for London’s street signs into a book and how that book acts as a series of “snapshots of a moment in the city’s history”.
If you (or somebody you know) already owns Sam Robert’s brilliant Ghost Signs book (as featured in last year’s gift guide), then London Street Signs is the perfect companion. The Times Literary Supplement called it ‘unexpectedly fascinating’ and that’s a pretty good way of summing it up and a nice testament to Alistair’s talent for translating his passion into something everyone can get lost in.
You can buy London Street Signs for £14.24 from Bookshop.org.
Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London - Caroline Knowles
You can’t really understand London right now unless you follow the money. So that’s exactly what Caroline Knowles did when she was writing her latest book, Serious Money - she literally walked from the City of London and Canary Wharf, right the way through to Virginia Water through west London to get face-to-face with London’s one percent.
Because, as she told us when we spoke to her in May, “there’s just something about treading the pavements that allows you to see things which you’d go right past if you were moving more quickly.”
The result is so much more than a voyeuristic ‘how the other half live’ kind of book. Serious Money pulls back the curtain on how London has become world class at “creating ever more wealth that falls into ever fewer hands” and how the ‘luxury landscape’ that’s been created effects all of us that choose to live in London.
You can buy Serious Money from Bookshop.org in paperback for £10.44 or in hardback for £23.75.
Iconicon - John Grindrod
John Grindrod is one of the best writers on London’s ‘built environment’ that we have right now. He manages to combine a passionate knowledge and genuine curiosity with a lightness of touch and a great sense of humour that makes everything he writes ridiculously accessible and revelatory.
If you never thought you’d be interested in the social history of Croydon housing estates, or the fate of TV AM’s ‘eggcup house’ then you haven’t read enough John Grindrod.
We interviewed John back in March, just as his new book, Iconicon came out. We split our chat over two issues, and the first half is no longer behind the paywall if you want to go and take a read:
Iconicon is one of those books - very much like Serious Money and London Street Signs - that will change the way you see the city (and the country). From the Millennium Dome, to Docklands, to Wimpey estates in New Addington - this is the real, post-80s face of London revealed in all its absurdity, grandeur and exuberance.
Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain is available on Bookshop.org in paperback or hardback. While you’re there check out John’s previous books: Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain and Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt.
Waterloo Sunrise: London from the Sixties to Thatcher - John Davis
Waterloo Sunrise is a weighty book, in all senses of the word. In its 600 pages there are over 80 photographs accompanying an immaculately-researched telling of how London was utterly transformed in the 60s and 70s.
In the intro to our April 6 issue (also now unpaywalled), in which we interviewed John, we said that the insane amount of detail and “almost fanatical amount of research evident in every page” of Waterloo Sunrise might make it appear academic at first glance, but if you give yourself over to it then you’ll find an incredibly vivid and lively history of London’s fashion world, sex trade, restaurant scene and nightlife during a time when the city was at the epicentre of the western world.
If you know someone who has a well-thumbed copy of Ackroyd’s London: The Biography sat next to a copy of The Buddha of Suburbia, then it’s a pretty good bet they’ll get something out of this book.
You can buy Waterloo Sunrise in hardback direct from Princeton Press for £30.00.
Or from Bookshop.org for the same price.
5 little bits
At the end of last week the Independent Cultural Review of London Fire Brigade was published and the findings were damning. The report was commissioned after the death of Jaden Francois-Esprit, a 21-year-old trainee at Wembley fire station who took his own life in 2020 after being bullied due to his race and being teased for eating Caribbean food. From over 2,000 anonymous accounts the report concluded that there is institutional misogyny and racism in the LFB, and that people of colour were “frequently the target of racist abuse”. The report also found that, in 2020, 95% of firefighters were white. Over the weekend, ex-London firefighters and the firefighters union were questioning whether the situation could be changed for the better.
The Met is warning that Just Stop Oil is “set to cause further disruption in London in the run-up to Christmas” with protests planned from 28 November to 14 December. Reports say that these new protests will likely take the form of marching “as slowly as possible” around busy roundabouts “in multiple teams and in timed phases”.
Vauxhall has been designated a ‘Night Time Enterprise Zone’, which means it’s going to get £130,000 from Sadiq in the new year to help it recover from the pandemic and “boost footfall and make the area covering Vauxhall town centre and South Lambeth Road towards Stockwell station more inclusive.”
Sky News has a report on the ‘new wave of mudlarking’ on the Thames. An activity that is now so popular that the Port of London Authority has temporarily stopped handing out new permits.
Denise Scott Brown, who (along with her husband Robert Venturi) was the architect behind the ‘controversial’ Sainsbury Wing entrance to the National Gallery; has waded into the argument around the plans to ‘substantially remodel’ it, accusing the new designers of “making our building look like a circus clown”.