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hbk: Goldmark, Uppingham, UK, 1997
pbk: Granta, UK, 1997
ISBN ? (UK hbk),,, 1-86207-009-1 (UK pbk)
non-fiction, reportage, history, anthropology, satire, occult archaeology, gothic, London, Howard Marks
With photographs and illustrations by Marc Atkins.
Lights Out for the Territory is, perhaps, Iain Sinclair's most accessible work so far. Sinclair and photographer Marc Atkins chart London's hidden history and secret subcultures.
Sinclair walks the city and records various strange encounters with typical Hogarthian relish: we meet London's alternative chroniclers - writers, artists and film-makers who deserve a wider audience; we're introduced to the forgotten, dispossessed and deranged citizens of the metropolis; and we're treated to an unforgettable encounter with The Lord Archer of Western-Super-Mare .
The publishers call the meeting between Archer and Sinclair "one of the more unlikely encounters of recent literary history." And the application of Sinclair's dark wit makes it one of the funniest too.
[Full review by Andrew Hedgecock to follow]
*note: Commentary by Andrew Hedgecock.
"The London essay has a long history, encompassing Washington Irving and Charles Lamb, but in the hands of Sinclair it also becomes a form of urban necromancy ... As a stylist he is incomparable; he is the De Quincey of contemporary English letters, scathing and sometimes savage, fierce and even contemptuous, but always with an exultant humour." --Peter Ackroyd (in The Times ).
"Avoiding chummy Dickensian sentimentality, Sinclair subjects London's 'increasingly deranged populace' to his hard stare. He hangs out with what he calls a stock company of anarchists, disenfranchised artists and petty criminals, and he is a walking gazetteer on the secondhand book-dealers and bohemian underground from Bow to Bankside... Lights Out for the Territory ensures that the holy ground of London's streets, pubs and canals will never smell the same again." --Roy Porter (in The Sunday Times ).
Magpie Bookshop
(in Spitalfields, London E1... has collector's copies of books by Iain Sinclair for sale and useful information about the local area: the scene of Jack the Ripper's final killing and setting for Sinclair's Lud Heat and White Chappell Scarlet Tracings )
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