Product Description

"One afternoon in January 1995, as I drove along Western Avenue, I did what I had never done before: i parked the car in a side-street and walked on to the road..."

In Leadville, Ed Platt tells the story of Western Avenue from the optimism of its construction in the 1920s to its partial demolition seventy years later. It is a tale of the city and the traffic, of suburbia and the dreams of its inhabitants, and of our senseless and all-consuming love affair with the motor car.

'Platt has created a drama that is not only Orwellian in its attention to what you might call the state of the nation . . . but almost Dickensian in the recording of the colour and pathos of its inhabitants' Tim Lott, The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209504 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

Review
"'Platt has created a drama that is not only Orwellian in its attention to what you might call the state of the nation... but almost Dickensian in the recording of the colour and pathos of its inhabitants' Tim Lott, The Times"

About the Author
Edward Platt was born in 1968. He lives in London where he works as a journalist.

Customer Reviews

A dispatch from the battleground of the A40
Edward Platt's unique and highly unusual book combines first person reportage with history, sociology, urban planning and humour. It reveals the story of Western Avenue - one of London's busiest and most traffic-choked stretches of tarmac - through the eyes of the residents that live along it as they confront the news that their homes are due to be demolished to make way for a new flyover. Within this battleground Platt cleverly interweaves the individual stories of numerous residents, including itinerants and those that have lived there long-term, with historical anecdotes about the road's construction in the 1920s and society's growing love affair with the motor car. It's an informative, intelligent and highly entertaining read told through an engaging first-person narrative. "Leadville" is a compelling piece of journalistic endeavour which elevates the "biography" to a new, more interesting, level. Highly recommended.

A compelling, moving and beautifully written book
As someone who's made many journeys along the A40 into London in the last 10 years, I always wondered why landmarks on my journey - like the bingo hall, which meant I was nearly home - were being demolished. One day in 1995, journalist Edward Platt did what I'd just idly mused about doing. He decided to stop his car and talk to the people who lived beside the road to find out more.

What he discovered makes extraordinary reading. He takes us on two parallel journeys, the first of which I have to admit I enjoyed most. He meets the people who live beside Western Avenue and explores their memories of life beside the road - once a wide boulevard with almost no traffic - and their feelings in the face of a bureaucracy about to demolish their homes to widen the road. Platt never intrudes or judges; he simply tells their stories, and every one is incredibly moving. It's easy to assume that anyone who lives beside a road that brings 18 million cars a year right past your house (as one character calculates) would be desperate to move, but as we get to know the characters it becomes very clear that it's not that simple. When we realise that a change in transport policy means the road will not, in the end, be widened it's hard not to become angry.

As we journey to the pointless destruction of people's homes, Platt's other journey is a fascinating history of the automobile age: we learn about the history of the road itself, and how many of the dreams of our age have grown - and died - around the motor car.

I loved this book. It is much more than the biography of one of London's arterial roads. It's hard to describe the scope of it, and especially hard to describe the warmth of it. It's a wonderful and very unusual book and it's beautifully written. Buy it!

"Progress is a comfortable disease"
You'll probably only want to read this book if you've ever had the chance to use the A40. Having said that, you might be so sick of the road that you won't want to spend time reading anything about it. It has to be said that this is a great read, about how London's sprawl reaches out to the suburbs. It's full of wonderful little stories from people that have lived next to this choking arterial road into the city.

All the recollections of the residents are tinged with a strange sadness and pathos for times before the former Tory government planned to wipe out parts of a small community in a bid to widen the road - before the Labour government came in at the end of the 90's and decided that they would not follow through on the Tory idea.

In between the interviews with the residents, Platt's book is punctuated with vignettes of planning history and references to Le Corbusier's visions of society's ideal of constant growth, ever outward from the city. That as the demands for housing and business space perpetuate, the city grows ever wider, eventually swallowing up small pockets of community that were built many years ago. It is written very well and lightened by the fact that there are so many interesting stories from people that remember moving to the Western Avenue in it's glory days.