Iain Sinclair, best known for books on the UK’s capital such as “London Orbital” and “Lights Out For The Territory”, asked a range of writers for material on the subject of disappearances in London. The result is this volume, “London: City of Disappearances.”
Although the contributions – from JG Ballard, Bill Drummond, Michael Moorcock, Jonathan Meades, Alan Moore and others – are far from uniform, the atmosphere emerging from these pages will be familiar to anyone who knows Sinclair and how his omnivorous hunger for even seemingly trivial information shows through in his work. Each writer here seems infected with this trait of Sinclair’s and a lot of the material is the result of a similarly obsessive approach to investigation.
Ruth Valentine, for example, has researched the life story of a German woman, Catherine Muller, who was confined to an Epsom asylum in 1906. Catherine briefly escaped a few years later and mysteriously became pregnant prior to her recapture. What happened to her? The records tell us next to nothing, as no asylum staff spoke German and there was little compassion for the mentally unwell back then. Valentine makes a valiant attempt to piece together a picture of Catherine’s tragic life, and to understand what became of her daughter.
Bill Drummond, on the other hand, is open about his distaste for the past, and for London: “Wouldn’t mind if the whole lot disappeared in front of my eyes and we were left with a huge wild forest at the heart of south-east England with red squirrels leaping from tree to tree.” But he decides to walk from the very north to the very south of the city, crossing through its centre at Charing Cross. Drummond (a former member of the KLF) contributes what is possibly the funniest piece and certainly the one with the most contemporary focus.
While a lot of the material is based on the research or exploration of the writers, there are a few pieces of fiction here too, most notably from Alan Moore. Moore’s piece (which I aim to re-read before giving this book back to its lender) deals with a very different sort of disappearance, a kind of collapsing of one reality into another. There’s also some poetry from the likes of Bill Griffiths and Allen Fisher, while Michael Moorcock and Sarah Wise have peppered the book with brief notices about former architectural features – some vanished, other resurrected in other parts of the city.
The central theme (disappearances in London) is only loosely adhered to by the contributors, and there’s a similarly loose structure to how the contributions have been sequenced. Sinclair has created sections for each of London’s four quarters, its rail termini, its “edgelands” (revisiting London Orbital territory) and to topics like Bibliomania, in which the vanished eccentric book dealer Driffield features heavily.
When you read “London: City of Disappearances” you’ll find yourself becoming interested in things you never thought would capture your imagination. You’ll find yourself wanting to know more about people, streets, events and communities that you were always aware of but never familiar with. And you’ll find yourself (as is often the case with Iain Sinclair) seeing London in a different light, a city whose history isn’t quite gone – just obscured under a layer of soot and silt.
