Product Description

A brilliant voyage of discovery into the deeply unfashionable fringes of London. 'It isn't often that one reads a book and is convinced that it's an instant classic, but I'm sure that LONDON ORBITAL will be read 50 years from now. This account of his walk around the M25 is on one level a journey into the heart of darkness, that terrain of golf courses, retail parks and industrial estates which is Blair's Britain. It's a fascinating snapshot of who we are, lit by Sinclair's vivid prose, andon another level a warning that the mythological England of village greens and cycling aunts has been buried under the rush of a million radial tyres' J. G. Ballard, Observer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18836 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
One might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing more boring than spending a year walking around the M25 would be reading a large book about walking around the M25. Yet Iain Sinclair's London Orbital is a fascinating and curiously haunting read. Part of the reason is that Sinclair brings to the project an immense literary talent, an intense and lifelong interest in the history of London and some extremely interesting travelling companions.

The walk was taken in several stages, from Waltham Abbey to Shenley, Abbots Langley to Staines, Staines to Epsom and Epsom to Westerham before going on to Dartford, the river and Carfax and arriving back at Waltham Abbey. Each stage fills a chapter and the reader is advised to take a leaf out of Sinclair's own book by taking one stage, one chapter at a time. This is a large book of 450-odd pages and by the time the journey gets under way-–about 60 pages in--even Sinclair's dazzling prose is not enough to offset the gloomy prospect of taking a second-hand trip around the London Orbital. And yet after the first trip one finds oneself being sucked in and thinking about some of the grey, ugly images, or being angered by the grasping and philistine approach of developers and copywriters and the cynicism and hypocrisy of government.

The history of London has long been Sinclair's great passion but he populates this strange excursion with flesh-and-blood people as well as literary and mythic figures: there's John Clare watching Byron's funeral procession before embarking on his epic three-day journey back to Northborough, "chewing tobacco and gnawing grass torn up from the roadside"; then there are tales of Dracula, of lost lunatic asylums, of passionate political activists crying out against toxic land and of meetings with ex-members of London's criminal underworld.

London Orbital gets under the skin. What looks at first like a dull and deeply unappealing journey is actually a multi-layered, lyrical, ugly, mythical, engaged and engaging excursion from the present into the past and back again. --Larry Brown

Review
'It isn't often that one reads a book and is convinced that it's an instant classic, but I'm sure that LONDON ORBITAL will be read 50 years from now. This account of his walk around the M25 is on one level a journey into the heart of darkness, that terrain of golf courses, retail parks and industrial estates which is Blair's Britain. It's a fascinating snapshot of who we are, lit by Sinclair's vivid prose, and on another level a warning that the mythological England of village greens and cycling aunts has been buried under the rush of a million radial tyres' J. G. Ballard, Observer

Will Self, New Statesman
‘Sinclair’s recent work represents some of the most important in contemporary English letters'

Customer Reviews

Astonishing, fascinating, couldn't put it down
Knowing Sinclair as a brilliant, if sometimes knotty, writer, I wasn't sure he was going to pull this idea off. He chose to walk around the M.25, sometimes accompanied by various eccentric friends, sometimes encountering eccentrics along the way. The road, as in certain famous American books, actually provides the narrative and dynamic. You keep reading, just as you might keep walking or driving -- just to see what's around the next turn and the next. This is a fascinating mix of fact, poetic inspiration and commentary on the state of our country, especially as exemplified by London. It mourns the death of history, the corruption of our humanity, just as it tells us things we never knew about London's fringes. Why, for intance, were all the mad houses set where they were? What mysterious, maybe poisonous factories are located there? Who inhabits this strange, previously unremarked wasteland? Sinclair's prose is laconic,
poetic and utterly engaging. I thought this would be a book I would dip into now and again. Instead I found myself refusing food and sleep until I had finished it. It has something in common with Cobbett, just as Sinclair seems to have much in common with those eighteenth century writers who took an interest in EVERYTHING. Some of his usual heroes are here - Ballard, the
poet of the motorways, Moorcock, the visionary explorer of unknown London alleys - but the book has a freshness of vision and prose which invigorates or reinvigorates everything he talks about.
The quality of paper and binding should also be mentioned. Few books, these days, are as well made and, like Sinclair's sturdy
prose, built to last for centuries!

A journey through language, history and geography.
The other reviews here left me a little puzzled, perhaps the readers found Sinclair a tad intimidating? I don't say this to be unkind, as at times, I too had to put the book down to take some respite from the barrage of information, images and references. This is more than just a piece of travel writing, it is the nexus of an almost overwhelming number of intertextual as well as geographic explorations. Iain Sinclair walked, not just through the physical locations he describes, but also through time, history and the sheer abstract. His wanderings as a modern day flaneur are inciteful, educated and hugely original. The story of a hike around the M25 really shouldn't be interesting, but Sinclair makes it so. He opens our eyes to the political and historical reality of the gradually increasing sprawl of London, as well as its psychological effects on modern life. I read this and then graduated to the even more intimidating 'Landor's Tower'. I'd recommend both highly, but unless you're widely read, you may have a little trouble keeping up with Sinclair's train of thought. He doesn't insult his readers, he assumes a high level of intelligence. A breath of fresh air in these times of trashy faddish novels and celebrity autobiographies...

Driven round the bend
I am afraid I have to agree with the reviewers who didn't like "London Orbital". I originally skimmed through the book in a bookshop and it didn't appeal to me. However, a friend bought a copy for me as a gift and so I ended up reading it.

Firstly, "London Orbital" says surprisingly little about the M25 itself. Anyone interested in the history of how a major motorway came to be built in the green belt surrounding London or seeking an analysis of the effect it has had on local communities in terms of transport, economics and the environment will be disappointed. Instead, Sinclair uses the general location of the M25 as an excuse to write about anything in the area which takes his fancy.

Unfortunately this includes a lot of things which are speculative or just gossip. A good example is Sinclair's account of the housing development at Enfield Island Village. For nearly 200 years the land was previously occupied by the Enfield Royal Small Arms Factory. Sinclair drops dark hints that the land the housing is built on may be contaminated with chemicals or even radioactivity from the factory. However, it appears that the only source for this information is a conversation with a local resident who once knew someone who worked in the factory. Sinclair doesn't actually seem to have done any proper research into this subject, which is disappointing.

The Island Village issue is typical of the negativity and cynicism in this book. However, I didn't find much humour, and it all gets a bit wearying after a while. I was also wearied by the writing style which consists mainly of short sentences and missing verbs. At first this is fresh and original, but soon becomes a major headache.

Negative reviews such as this one tend to be rated badly by other Amazon reviewers, but I can only report on how I found the book. To be honest, I couldn't finish it. I thought it was terrible.