Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
By Craig Taylor
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
“A rich and exuberant kaleidoscopic portrait of a great, messy, noisy, daunting, inspiring, maddening, enthralling, constantly shifting Rorschach test of a place. . . . Delightful. . . . In Taylor’s patient and sympathetic hands, regular people become poets, philosophers, orators.” -- New York Times Book Review
Londoners is a fresh and compulsively readable view of one of the world's most fascinating cities–a vibrant narrative portrait of the London of our own time, featuring unforgettable stories told by the real people who make the city hum.
Acclaimed writer and editor Craig Taylor has spent years traversing every corner of the city, getting to know the most interesting Londoners, including the voice of the London Underground, a West End rickshaw driver, an East End nightclub doorperson, a mounted soldier of the Queen's Life Guard at Buckingham Palace, and a couple who fell in love at the Tower of London—and now live there. With candor and humor, this diverse cast—rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant, men and women (and even a Sarah who used to be a George)—shares indelible tales that capture the city as never before.
Together, these voices paint a vivid, epic, and wholly original portrait of twenty-first-century London in all its breadth, from Notting Hill to Brixton, from Piccadilly Circus to Canary Wharf, from an airliner flying into London Heathrow Airport to Big Ben and Tower Bridge, and down to the deepest tunnels of the London Underground. Londoners is the autobiography of one of the world's greatest cities.
Craig Taylor
Craig Taylor's non-fiction has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times and the Globe and Mail. His fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review. He wrote One Million Tiny Plays About Britain for the Guardian's Weekend magazine for several years. Craig publishes Hamish Hamilton's Five Dials magazine as well as his own photocopied magazines, including The Review of Everything I've Ever Encountered and Dark Tales of Clapham. His first book, Return To Akenfield, was published by Granta in 2006, and the play of the novel toured the UK in 2009.
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Reviews for Londoners
140 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not as exciting as I thought it would be. Some of the narratives were pretty boring or depressing. London is still a place I'd like to visit but this book made me rethink moving there one day! It is interesting to learn about a city from people who live there, visited there or left there. Too bad they didn't interview a librarian in London. That would have been a good one! Overall, city life had its ups & downs no matter who you are or where you are.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Kind of obsessed with London lately. This starts out great, very much like classic Studs Terkel. Gets kind of repetetive by the end. But still quite readable, a slice of London as seen by its citizens.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wow. I laughed, I cried, I empathised. Every thought and feeling I've ever had about London, give or take, is expressed by someone in this book. I don't know if people who don't have a very strong connection with London would get it but I want this book forever.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book Title: "Londoners”Author: Craig TaylorPublished By: Ecco Book an imprint of Harper CollinsAge Recommended: 17+Reviewed By: Kitty BullardRaven Rating: 4.5Review: I have always wanted to go to London, to walk the streets of England and see exactly how they live there. I still have the desire to go, perhaps more now than ever before. I can say that reading Craig Taylor’s book, “Londoners” was almost like being there. The stories are fantastic and vibrant the writing is fluid and keeps you interested. This is truly a great book!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overall, an interesting and perceptive anthology of various Londoners' views of their city. Most of the oral histories give at least some insights into the nature of living and working in London, which comes off as a busy, vibrant multicultural metropolis that still attracts people from around the country. There were a few stories I didn't like, as they were overwhelming critical, in a very overgeneralized way -- and, because of that, they said much more about the speakers than about where they lived. (It's an odd choice on Taylor's part to open his book with one such negative piece.) Still worth the read for those interested in London, if not up to Studs Terkel's best.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderful set of accounts from people on their views of London - mixed, some happy, some sad - but a great overall read. Recommended - particularly good for reading in small chunks.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Londoners. An excellent concept for a book. I had great expectations but was disappointed. This compendium of 83 interviews ( and 400 pages) of Londoners seemed a sure thing, and in fact it delivered some excellent commentary by the subjects, but rarely. In too many cases, one could have scratched the word "London" in the discussion and replaced it with "Philadelphia" or 'Cairo' without being any less factual. So, some interesting subjects, but it didn't deliver the promised insight into London life, the London experience, etc. etc. Perhaps there were six interviews of London residents, e.g., the voice of the woman who announces tube stations,that gave me insights into London 2011/12 and/or were particularly interesting. A good idea that doesn't deliver. Strengths - made me realize that there is probably not another city in the world that doesn't present the diverse ethnic background that London does.