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Category Archives: London

Books on Cities: A. N. Wilson, London: A History (2004)

London is a world city. Los Angeles, where I used to live, is less a world city than, as I once saw a banner at the airport call it, a “city that’s a world in itself.” Seoul, where I now live, is not a world city, despite strenuous promotional efforts on the part of its […]

This week’s city reading: the future of Detroit, a farewell to London, and the failings of transit in the San Francisco Bay Area

Detroit Open City (Aaron Robertson, Los Angeles Review of Books) “The species of loneliness one feels in New York is not the same in Detroit. There is an overwhelming awareness that in a city this large, things should be louder. ‘Detroit is the biggest small town in America,’ I once heard someone say. The slogan rings […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E34: The Tangible and the Intangible with Andrew Tuck

Colin Marshall sits down at Monocle magazine’s offices in Marylebone, London with Andrew Tuck, editor of the magazine, host of its podcast The Urbanist, and editor of its book The Monocle Guide to Better Living. They discuss how the London experience for a Monocle reader differs from that of others; how the magazine came to view the world through the […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E33: Avoiding Disposability with Jacques Testard

Colin Marshall sits down in Knightsbridge, London with Jacques Testard, founding editor of the quarterly arts journal The White Review. They discuss the re-issue of Nairn’s Towns featuring past guest Owen Hatherley; London’s surprisingly small literary culture and what, before founding The White Review, he didn’t see getting published; the “deeply stereotypical Williamsburg existence” he once lived in […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E32: Culture Over Class with Melvyn Bragg

Colin Marshall sits down in London’s West End with Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg of Wigton, host of Sky Arts 1’s The South Bank Show and BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time as well as the writer of many works of fiction and nonfiction including, most recently, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible and his latest […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E31: Is This London? with Iain Sinclair

Colin Marshall sits down in Hackney, London with Iain Sinclair, author of numerous books, all rooted in London and all operating across the spectrum of fiction to nonfiction, including Downriver, Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, and most recently American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light. They discuss the momentarily impossible-to-define issue of Hackney’s identity; the need […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E30: Masters of the City with PD Smith

Colin Marshall sits down in Winchester, England with PD Smith, author of books on science, literature, superweapons, and, most recently, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. They discuss whether London has all the elements of the archetypally ideal city; the essential quality of “a place where you meet strangers”; the need to avoid writing […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E29: This Used to Be the Future with Owen Hatherley

Colin Marshall sits down for bangers and mash in Woolwich, London, England, with writer on political aesthetics Owen Hatherley, author of the books Militant Modernism, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, A New Kind of Bleak, and Uncommon, on the pop group Pulp. They discuss the relevance of the combined sentiments of […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E28: Partially Inside, Partially Outside with Jack Hues

Colin Marshall sits down in Canterbury, England with Jack Hues, founding member of the rock band Wang Chung and jazz band The Quartet. Wang Chung’s latest album Tazer Up came out in 2012, and The Quartet’s next album Collaborations Volumes 1 & 2 comes out this fall. They discuss what makes the “Canterbury sound”; the differences between Wang Chung’s “English” […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E27: London Rambling with John Rogers

Colin Marshall walks through Stratford, London with John Rogers, author of the blog The Lost Byway and the book This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City. They discuss how one should approach one’s first London shopping mall, a built phenomenon that has changed dramatically over the decades; his memories of playing soccer with rotten fruit in Stratford’s […]