A Journey Through Ruin

`Essential reading ' iD `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. ' David Widgery, Independent on Sunday `Sheer good writing, sense and humanity ' Andrew Saint, Times Literary Supplement `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 `There is no space in a short review to give more than a hint of the intellectual delights of this book. Witty, well written and superbly stimulating, it is a must for everybody's reading list. ' Victor Belcher, English Heritage Magazine `Patrick Wright is a wandering, disestablished scholar whose method is to walk and talk. ' Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books `This is a formidable polemic that describes a realist's vision of a Britain under private affluence amid public squalor. ' Matthew Bray, Financial Times `Patrick Wright is an incisive thinker, a man of laudable principles and a skilful writer of punchy journalistic prose. ' Charles Bourne, Hampstead & Highgate Express `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. ' Boyd Tonkin, Observer