PD Smith

I’ve reviewed a won­der­ful book on the green belt for the Guardian. Out­skirts: Liv­ing Life on the Edge of the Green Belt is by John Grindrod, author of Con­cre­topia, a cel­e­bra­tion of post­war British archi­tec­ture (“I do love a bit of con­crete”).

Part his­to­ry and part mem­oir, Grindrod’s evoca­tive and intel­li­gent book explores the green belt and its place in our nation­al con­scious­ness. As well as explain­ing the his­to­ry of the green belt, one of the great strengths of the book is that Grindrod tells his own sto­ry of grow­ing up on a coun­cil estate in New Adding­ton, devel­oped dur­ing the 1930s on an exposed Sur­rey hill­top. Grindrod’s fam­i­ly moved from a flat in Bat­tersea to New Adding­ton in 1969: “a mod­ern phe­nom­e­non: the once urban poor trans­plant­ed back to the edge of the city, to the coun­try”. Their home was on “the out­skirts of the out­skirts” and oppo­site the green belt. His broth­er said it was “like every­thing a child could want! There were trees, fields of wheat … It just blew me away.”

Grindrod’s won­der­ful book struck a chord with me. I also grew up on the fringes of Lon­don in the 1970s, near the green belt. My par­ents lived in a rather unlove­ly 1930s semi on the out­skirts of Rom­ford, not far from the rather more desir­able gar­den sub­urb of Gidea Park, which was inspired by Ebenez­er Howard’s ide­al­is­tic vision of a decen­tralised urban future. “Town and coun­try must be mar­ried,” Howard had gushed, “and out of this joy­ous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civil­i­sa­tion.”

As Grindrod shows, it was large­ly Howard’s vision of gar­den cities that inspired the green belt, an urban plan­ning com­pro­mise designed to lim­it the growth of big cities such as Lon­don, a bar­ri­er to save the coun­try­side from an all-con­sum­ing tide of subtopia. I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on Rom­ford (although its rau­cous, colour­ful mar­ket was mem­o­rable) but I loved the sense that green spaces were nev­er too far away.

Today 13% of Eng­land is des­ig­nat­ed as green belt – a strik­ing fig­ure when you con­sid­er that only slight­ly more than 2% of land is actu­al­ly built on. But Grindrod shows that we need a new approach to the green belt to deal with the cur­rent hous­ing cri­sis: “To city dwellers, the green belt is tight­en­ing around our throats. To coun­try folk we are igno­rant bar­bar­ians, intent on its destruc­tion.”

Read my review here and do buy Grindrod’s book. You won’t be dis­ap­point­ed…

I’ve just reviewed a fas­ci­nat­ing new his­to­ry of squat­ting — The Autonomous City by Alexan­der Vasude­van.

Here’s a para­graph from my piece:

‘Vasude­van sees his book not mere­ly as a dry con­tri­bu­tion to urban his­to­ry, but as cel­e­bra­tion of the vital ideas and achieve­ments of those squat­ters who dared to imag­ine an alter­na­tive vision of life, an alter­na­tive to the neolib­er­al city and the urban­i­sa­tion that is still engulf­ing the world. His high­ly orig­i­nal argu­ment is that the his­to­ry of squat­ting reveals “the poten­tial reor­gan­i­sa­tion of our cities along more col­lec­tive, social­ly just and eco­log­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able lines”. Using archives cre­at­ed by squat­ters them­selves, doc­u­ment­ing their evanes­cent exper­i­ments, Vasude­van demon­strates that “the squat was a place of col­lec­tive world-mak­ing: a place to express anger and sol­i­dar­i­ty, to explore new iden­ti­ties and dif­fer­ent inti­ma­cies, to expe­ri­ence and share new feel­ings, and to defy author­i­ty and live autonomous­ly”.’

Vasude­van’s book is essen­tial read­ing for any­one inter­est­ed in the recent his­to­ry of cities or indeed how we can improve them in the future. Read my review on the Guardian’s web­site.

Net­ley Lucas was a debonair and charm­ing con man, described by the press as the “prince of trick­sters”. Matt Houl­brook has writ­ten a remark­able study of this extra­or­di­nary char­ac­ter who died in 1940, aged just 36. He was a noto­ri­ous con­fi­dence trick­ster, con­vict­ed thief, con­coc­ter of fake crime news sto­ries, and the writer and pub­lish­er of bogus roy­al biogra­phies.

Lucas changed iden­ti­ties as eas­i­ly as oth­ers change their cloth­ing. Houl­brook admit­s being fas­ci­nat­ed by the moti­va­tion of this gen­tle­man crook: “I’m obsessed with mak­ing sense of you.”

He began his crim­i­nal career aged just 14. A friend lat­er recalled how con­vinc­ing Lucas could be: “I had no idea that he was oth­er than he pre­tend­ed to be…he had a fas­ci­nat­ing way with oth­er men and women. He would look you straight in the face and assure you that he was lord some­body or a hero of the war – and you believed him.”

Lucas mon­e­tised his gen­teel man­ners and appear­ance, sweet-talk­ing hotel man­agers and shop­keep­ers, turn­ing charm and class into cred­it. By 17, he was dri­ving around in a chauf­feur-dri­ven Daim­ler from Har­rods and social­is­ing with duchess­es and cho­rus girls. Lat­er he went on to rein­vent him­self first as a crime jour­nal­ist and then as the author and pub­lish­er of roy­al biogra­phies. After he pub­lished a biog­ra­phy of Queen Mary in 1930, she went through a copy of the book high­light­ing the errors: “I have anno­tat­ed this book to show what a num­ber of inven­tions are writ­ten about one.”

For Houl­brook, Lucas’s life-sto­ry reveals deep­er truths about the peri­od after the Great War in which the bound­aries between class and gen­der were shift­ing. New forms of mass cul­ture and democ­ra­cy were chang­ing how peo­ple viewed the state’s insti­tu­tions and offered greater pos­si­bil­i­ties of social rein­ven­tion: “Lucas’s crimes were unusu­al, but his aspi­ra­tions echoed those of count­less ordi­nary men and women in a peri­od when adver­tis­ing encour­aged dream­like fan­tasies of social mobil­i­ty.”

Lucas’s suc­cess as a con­fi­dence trick­ster sug­gest­ed that in an “age of dis­guise” all you need­ed was mon­ey and a veneer of class to pass your­self off as a gen­tle­man. In a soci­ety of strangers, his crimes were deeply sub­ver­sive.

You can read my Guardian review of Houl­brook’s book here.

I’ve just reviewed a new col­lec­tion of essays on Crime Fic­tion in Ger­man, edit­ed by Katha­ri­na Hall who, as well as being a Pro­fes­sor of Ger­man, blogs on inter­na­tion­al crime fic­tion at Mrs Peabody Inves­ti­gates. Appar­ent­ly it’s the first study in Eng­lish “to offer a com­pre­hen­sive overview of Ger­man-lan­guage crime fic­tion from its ori­gins in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the post-reuni­fi­ca­tion Ger­many of the new mil­len­ni­um”.

It’s an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing col­lec­tion, one which has proved very use­ful to me in my research for Watch­ing the Detec­tives. You can down­load Pro­fes­sor Hal­l’s intro­duc­tion to the vol­ume for free here. Unfor­tu­nate­ly you will have to buy a copy of the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment to read my review. Or if you have a sub­scrip­tion you can read it here.

I’ve been talk­ing to Dar­ran Ander­son, author of the remark­able Imag­i­nary Cities, at Strange Hori­zons. It was great fun! Hope you enjoy it too.

Read the con­ver­sa­tion here.