A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London - Softcover

Wright, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199541949 ISBN 13: 9780199541942

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

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.

Cutting through the teeming surface of London, it investigates a number of wider themes: the rise and dramatic fall of council housing, the coming of privatization, the changing memory of the Second World War, once used to justify post-war urban development and reform but now seen as a sacrifice betrayed. 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.

About this title

Review:

The chapter on the national trust is among the best and most original writing...I've ever read. (Vera Rule, The Guardian)

From the Back Cover:

'A Journey Through Ruins' is a fascinating, seminal and unique portrait of Britain. From his pointed observations of East London – especially of its post-war reconstruction – Patrick Wright builds an arresting, controversial new understanding of this country from the ruins of the past. With a meticulous, mischievous eye for extracting the true meaning of everyday events and objects, Wright focuses on a culture that, in the very process of offering paternalistic care for its people, has veered dangerously off-course – but he also spots some rays of light and zest for life to be savoured and nurtured.

“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'

“Astute and imaginative ... An immensely heartening book ... Here is a city dweller with the gusto of Baudelaire and the eye of Jane Jacobs who, undeterred by dog shit and bullshit, enjoys the chaotic humanity, the ironic architectural juxtapositions, the 'esprit de jeu' of late twentieth-century London”
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

“The big buzz that comes from reading Patrick Wright’s historiographical jaunt through the post-war junk landscape ... is its ‘cool topicality’”
FINANCIAL TIMES

“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”
OBSERVER

“Sheer good writing, sense and humanity”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

“Essential reading”
iD

FULLY UPDATED WITH A NEW CHAPTER

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0199541949
• ISBN 13: 9780199541942
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 397