MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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A riveting chronicle of the four decades that defined contemporary London
Workers on the Silent Highway, a photograph from Street Life in London, 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith’ The best-known of the LCC’s Arts and Crafts fire stations, job architect HFT Cooper, 1901–2, still in service
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
London 1870-1910: City at its Zenith
by Andrew Saint
Lund and Humphries £24.43
THIS intriguing, informative, richly illustrated and engagingly written volume covers 40 years of a city living a epochal change, from the completion of the Joseph Bazalgette’s outfall sewers, switching London Underground to electric propulsion, the growth of trade unionism, birth of social democracy and … the first all-weather ice rinks made possible using a novel mixture of glycerine and water.
In a curious, and perhaps telling, coincidence, the period addressed is equivalent to the average lifespan for the time of just 41.8 years.
The agricultural depression meant that many sought refuge in London where overcrowding and poor sanitation caused much premature death.
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