London Writing Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Abstract: This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.

- by
- •
- Geography, Human Geography, Urban Geography, Economic Geography
- by Ståle Holgersen
- •
- Urban Geography, Marxism, Urban Planning, Class

Book Review in 'Literary London'

- by Suneel Mehmi
- •
- English Literature, London Writing
- by Johanna C Fokken
- •
- English Literature, Literature, Public Space, London Writing

A topographical reading of Ignatius Sancho’s letters, especially as it relates to his detailed account of the Gordon riots of 1780, remains a gap in Sancho’s studies. Most of the earlier studies have only mentioned his account of the riots briefly. His account of the riots spans across four letters addressed to banker John Spink, which have all been, along with several other letters he wrote, posthumously published in the collection, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. As part of my discussion, I will show how a mapping of the spaces described in Sancho’s Letters reveals the unlikelihood of his account being solely eyewitness. Here, however, I aim to follow Sancho’s movement through the disrupted spaces where the riots took place and examine his reactions to these spaces. My conclusion here is that Sancho associates with the largely unscathed spaces of Westminster, where he lived, an indication of the social wellness of the area, and himself.

Some three decades have elapsed since the publication of John Healy's seminal autobiography of Irish immigrant experience in London, The Grass Arena. In the intervening years, the text has been the subject of relatively little critical commentary. This article endeavours to contribute to scholarship in the fields of postwar literary studies and Irish literary studies by conducting a close reading of this compelling text. The overall claim posited is that aspects of Healy's experiences are representative of wider facets of Irish experiences in London, and more broadly Great Britain, in the mid-to-late twentieth century. The central thesis underscores the significance of The Grass Arena's valuable contribution to a wider understanding of the overall lived experience of the Irish immigrant in Britain in the mid-to-late twentieth century. The critical framework for this argument draws on the scholarship of Giorgio Agamben. From this critical reference point, a case is made for reading Healy's autobiography through the prism of Agamben's notion of the 'state of exception'. The article identifies three instances of 'states of exception', the army, the prison and the hospital, as both physical and symbolic spaces that represent Agamben's model in Healy's text. The overarching argument of this article is that Healy's memoir is a unique, nuanced and valuable literary depiction of the difficult actual lived experience of a particular subset of the Irish diaspora in Britain that warrants sustained critical attention.

- by Rebecca D'Arcy
- •
- Irish Studies, Irish Literature, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Literature

Three disparate yet related things happened in November 2008 that suggest it is apposite to revisit a film that was controversial when released but which provides a
sophisticated reading of London in the early 21st century. First, Dirty Pretty Things (Frears 2002) was aired on Channel 4. Second, ID cards started to be issued to overseas nationals and airport workers. Third, London Mayor Boris Johnson called for an amnesty for all British migrants working illegally. Soon after the film was released the frenzied moral panic about asylum seekers was peaking, until knocked off the tabloid agenda by the Iraq war. The film was controversial when released and still provokes strong positive and negative reactions. It weaves together with great aplomb complex elements of the material, imagined, live, surveiled and (immigration) policed city. The inner London location filming adds credibility which counters the somewhat implausible, though tense and engaging plot. Cinema has long influenced our perception of the modern city even to the extent of producing the city (Clarke 1997 and Shiels & Fitzmaurice 2001). Many reviews of Dirty Pretty Things have been written but I want to concentrate, first on some misconceptions and then on its neo noir (Schwartz 2005) credentials, which affect the manner in which it portrays divergent yet proximate
aspects of the city big condition in a globalised neoliberal political economy.

- by Michael Edema Leary-Owhin
- •
- Film Studies, Film Theory, Literature and cinema, Film Analysis

Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal's Tourism (2006), as a contemporary British Asian novel, counts as postcolonial fiction yet adds a post-postcolonial and postmodern twist by presenting itself in the context of tourism. Although generally perceived as pulp fiction for its provocative themes and pornographic scenes, the novel's portrayal of the second-generation immigrant experience, urban space and tourism invites a close reading from the perspectives of spatiality and movement, as well as an analysis that is interdisciplinary in its approach, its theoretical background situated at the intersection of tourism, cultural, postcolonial and diaspora studies. The present paper investigates Dhaliwal's novel in terms of the relationship of identity, space and movement, or more specifically what I call mobile subjectivities: the figures of the tourist and the flâneur, and argues that the basic elements of flânerie and tourism are indispensable attributes of British Asians' diasporic identity and experience, and thus integral to the analysis of movement and subjectivity in British Asian fiction.

- by Eva Pataki
- •
- Space and Place, Cultural Identity, Subjectivity (Identity Politics), London Writing
- by Ágnes Györke
- •
- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Psychogeography
- by Rebecca Bligh
- •
- Cultural History, History Of London, Archives, Special Libraries

Peter Ackroyd's 'Hawksmoor' (1985) tells two stories in alternating chapters: one set in London between 1711 and 1715, the other in present-day London. In the first story, a murderous architect beholden to occult beliefs relates his exploits and situates them within his project of subverting the Enlightenment agenda of his superiors; in the second story, told by an apparently objective third-person narrator, the detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is baffled by a series of bizarre murders. The text’s two loci in time mark, respectively, the early days of modernity, in which science and rationality appeared to herald a brighter future, and late modernity, in which this optimism has come under question. The detective, who embodies the rationalist ethos and the tenet of scientific progress, emerges as a figure whose failure casts doubt upon the validity of the core beliefs of Western culture. Peter Ackroyd’s text is an original example of the sub-genre known as the ‘anti-detective narrative.’

- by Martin Rosenstock
- •
- History Of London, Intertextuality, Postmodernism, Crime fiction

We read Blake’s poem ‘London’ aimed at sensitising readers to the early 19th century plight of London’s most vulnerable citizens. Our reading surfaces several issues relevant to organisational theorising: the role of ‘diabolical reading’ strategies in creating mental flux through textual flux; the use of visual and poetic symbolism to contest the language systems implicated in the psychic effects of institutional domination; and Blake’s narrative voice as wandering Bard, which places the poetic body at the centre of responding to spatial practices of the city. We argue Blake’s art still inspires because it haunts the reader as it continually renews itself in re-reading and so both inscribes and incorporates, making the word, flesh. Blake’s philosophy also highlights the creative poetic subject ‘placed’ in their city-landscape and so provides a pathway through inscription and incorporation. Implications for organizational theory are explained.

- by Janet Sayers
- •
- Aesthetics, English Literature, Film, Moving images, William Blake

The narrative of duality, philosophy of the mind, class, the other, class and transcendentalism.

The British spy novel took a realist turn in the 1960s epitomising the new wave. The first five novels each written Le Carré and Deighton were published in the period 1960-1970. Although both authors and these specific works have remained... more

- by Janice Morphet
- •
- London Writing, London, Spy Fiction, Spy Film
- by Tianjue Li
- •
- Film Analysis, London Writing, Topography, Urban Space
- by Allison Lin
- •
- Virginia Woolf, Henry James, London Writing, London

In this chapter, I consider the lived relationship between atmosphere and place, drawing on three works by British-African novelist Doris Lessing (1919–2013), who regularly in her writing offers lucid accounts of place atmospheres in London, the city she emigrated to from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) shortly after World War II [2]. These three works are:
 Lessing’s 1969 novel, The Four-Gated City, which depicts the emigrant experience of a young Southern Rhodesian woman named Martha Quest, who arrives in battle-scarred London immediately after World War II (Lessing 1969);
 Lessing’s 1960 In Pursuit of the English, a journalistic account of the author’s first year in London (Lessing 1960);
 Lessing’s short story, “Dialogue,” published in the 1978 Stories and one of her most encompassing depictions of the lived complexity of place atmospheres (Lessing 1978).

- by David Seamon
- •
- Space and Place, Phenomenology, Atmospheres (Architecture), Humanistic Geography

This is a paper delivered to the Literary London Society conference in 2013, which considers resistance to monstrous dangers in Robert Rankin's 'Brentford Trilogy'. By thwarting catastrophic threats to Brentford, Pooley and Omally... more

- by David Pike
- •
- Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Joseph Conrad, London Writing, London

As a result of his short story ‘Professional Mourners’ being included in the Sri Lanka GCE (Advanced Level) syllabus in English (2011-2020), I happened to be familiar with the life and works of Alagu Subramaniam, while coaching a group of students. The paper I wrote on it was later uploaded to the www.academia.edu website and thereby I made friends with a good number of readers. One such reader was the author’s grandniece Mrs. Premila Thurairatnam, based in Melbourne, Australia, who was kind to send me two copies of his The Big Girl (reprint). In my review of the same that appeared on The Island (June 23, 2019), I remember writing the following lines:
The 17 stories that have their individual thematic distinctions fit into a lovely saga of the 20th Century Jaffna community under postcolonial transition that would satisfy the curiosity of the younger generation about the idyllic social situation of Jaffna before it underwent numerous radical changes due to the violent up-rise of LTTE and the separatist movement that led to the emergence of a new political ideology whose basis is racism. The people and the practices are no more in Jaffna and so are the themes the author has worked on. Subramaniam’s command of the language is worth for the amateur readers and writers in English to imbibe. On the basis of its numerous virtues, I recommend The Big Girl & Other Stories by Subramaniam as a class text for the upper-secondary and tertiary courses in English in Sri Lanka and abroad (Fonseka, 2019).
Already familiar with the thematic and stylistic quality of his short fiction, I consider it a pleasure to be invited this time to write a foreword to the new impression of his collection of short stories initially published in 1971, under the title Closing Time & Other Stories. The original publication had included some stories from the first book The Big Girl & Other Stories. They have been omitted from this republication as they can be found in the reprint of The Big Girl 2018. The stories are, Lovely Day, The Mathematician, The Cat, Danger and The Interpreter.

- by EA Gamini Fonseka and +1
- •
- English Literature, History Of London, Post-Colonialism, Sri Lankan Literature in English

It is important for all businesses to enhance visibility of their brands when exhibiting in trade fairs and shows. Use of display stands and boards help in showcasing the leaflets and brochures for potential clients to access and increase... more

- by Elin Olsson
- •
- Reception Theory, Furniture Design, London Writing, Furniture
- by Rebecca Bligh
- •
- Art, History Of London, Archives, Special Libraries

Nicholas Royle suggested in a 2004 review that literary outsider ‘Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912–64) has for too long been one of those writers more talked about than read’. Little seems to have changed in the intervening decade, the passing of the author’s centenary having been marked by several small events that contributed to what Royle termed the ‘expanding mythology’ around Maclaren-Ross, but seemingly inspiring little critical interest in his writings. This article seeks to redress the balance, utilizing the wealth of biographical material produced on Maclaren-Ross since his death in 1964, in a detailed reading of his wartime prose. Taking as its starting point the dichotomy between Maclaren-Ross’s dandified appearance and his aggressive heterosexuality, it resituates Maclaren-Ross—and, more importantly, his Second-World-War writings—within an emerging Queer Studies predicated upon the understanding that, whilst many homosexuals are, in their everyday behaviour, not queer people at all, ‘many heterosexuals are extremely queer’. In his peculiar attentiveness to clothing on as off the page, this article contends, Maclaren-Ross demonstrates an understanding, advanced for its time, of the performative power of dress, its ability to queer a society’s response to a given wearer, or group of wearers, and in so doing to betray the prejudices of that society, prejudices exacerbated by the exigencies of war.

- by Charlotte Charteris
- •
- Queer Studies, Masculinity Studies, Performativity, London Writing
- by Sebastian Sobecki
- •
- Christianity, History, Cultural History, Diplomatic History

Interview with Michael Moorcock on the relationship of his work to William Burroughs. The interview came about after Michael Butterworth of Savoy suggested my name to Keith Seward. Full text online at RealityStudio; please follow the... more

Interview with Michael Moorcock on the relationship of his work to William Burroughs. The interview came about after Michael Butterworth of Savoy suggested my name to Keith Seward.
Full text online at RealityStudio; please follow the link.

- by Mark P. Williams
- •
- Fiction Writing, American Literature, Cultural Studies, American Studies

The literature of ‘Windrush Generation’ authors invariably (and perhaps necessarily) found themselves engaged in debates regarding race, class and their articulation in the postwar Caribbean migrant experience. In this respect, an analysis of their narrative strategies serves as useful indicator for authorial attitudes towards contemporary black working-class politico-cultural tendencies. Applying concepts originating with Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Vološinov to authors ER Braithwaite, Sam Selvon and George Lamming, I highlight the ways in which language exists as a site of struggle; yet by bringing their analyses into Caribbean London, I show how such struggle must be conceived as inherently intersectional, allowing us to understand how their narrative strategies function as methods of navigating the structures of class and race in Britain and their manifestations in language.

- by Matti Ron
- •
- Race and Ethnicity, Caribbean Literature, Migrant Literature, Working-Class Literature
- by Peter T A Jones
- •
- Queer Studies, Victorian Studies, The Everyday (Architecture), Play

Nightlife historically has been viewed as a social problem to be contained by licensing, policing and the management of supply. In the context of recent trends towards deregulation of hours and supply, fears have again resurfaced as to the detrimental impact of the ‘night-time economy’ on street disorder and violence, concerns that have focused attention on the Licensing Act 2003. Utilizing a case study of the regulation of nightlife in the London locality of Southview, this article will explore how there has been ongoing and renewed attention on the problems associated with the night-time economy centred on differentiating between risky and safe cultural and economic forms. The article will argue that the Licensing Act represents a consolidation of over a decade of regulatory change that has ‘reordered’ regulatory approaches to nightlife; one that has, in combination with other aspects of economic, social and cultural change, been productive of ‘subcultural closure’.

- by Dr Deborah Talbot
- •
- Race and Racism, Critical Criminology, History Of London, Night Time Economy

in MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES 40.2 (2011): 102-104.

- by Kevin Flanagan
- •
- Psychogeography, History Of London, London Writing, Iain Sinclair

A review of B Gürenci Saglam's monograph which addresses the question of how 'knowable' is the mystical London which Ackroyd portrays in his novels. The work, which is based on Gürenci Saglam's doctoral thesis, focuses on Ackroyd's... more

- by David Charnick
- •
- English Literature, Literary Theory, London Writing, London

This paper shows that far from being a bathetic let-down, the ending of Peter Ackroyd's 'The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein' should in fact be seen as a stage in the author's development of the device of imaginative projection.

- by David Charnick
- •
- London Writing

This seminar paper - peer-reviewed by Prof. Dr. Straumann (University of Zurich) - is a literary essay on J.G. Ballard's novel high-rise. It aims to explain the hyperbole of chaos within the book by heavily drawing on theories from Richard Sennett and his seminal work The Fall of Public Man. This interpretation is embedded in a brief history of architecture and the beginnings of high-rise construction without which it is near impossible to understand the situation presented in the eponymous novel. The paper concludes that high-rises are inherently problematic for social relations due to a lack of social spaces. The ensuing chaos is a possible outcome of the very tyranny of intimacy Sennett described in 1977.

- by Roman Fässler
- •
- Sociology, English Literature, Urban Studies, Contemporary Literature
- by Niall Martin
- •
- Globalization, Globalisation and cultural change, Stanley Kubrick, London Writing

The paper examines the popular craze for Flash songs among the Victorian working and middle classes, the critical backlash against Egan and, later, Ainsworth, and Dickens’ efforts to distance himself from any association with Newgate novels and novelists, stated in his preface to the 1841 edition of Oliver Twist. In this preface, Dickens attacks the romanticism of the criminal underclass, and objects to and rejects the use of Flash dialogue in fiction, arguing instead for a new form of literary social realism. The paper includes two appendices offering examples and translations of Flash slang from Life in London and Ainsworth’s song ‘Nix My Dolly Pals’ from Rookwood. The title of this paper is taken from Ainsworth’s song and means ‘magistrates, pickpockets and thieves in prison.’

- by Stephen Carver
- •
- Victorian Literature, London Writing, Charles Dickens, Pierce Egan

A 6500 word essay - This project grew out of a paper entitled ‘Working-class heroes: Jack Sheppard, Henry Holford & The Literature of Costermongers’ presented at the G.W.M. Reynolds: Popular Culture, Literature & Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century Conference, at the University of Birmingham in July 2000. The complete essay places Reynolds’ epic serial The Mysteries of London (1844 – 1856) within the inter-related contexts of social investigation, Chartism, Newgate fiction, and the Victorian literary novel, comparing and contrasting Reynolds’ masterpiece with Eugene Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris (1843), and depictions of the London criminal underworld by Egan, Ainsworth, Dickens and Mayhew. Reynolds’ unorthodox treatment of fallen women is considered (he doesn’t kill them off like Sue’s La Goualeuse or as Dickens does ‘The Hospital Patient’ and Nancy), as well as his views on capital punishment, and his device of allowing underworld characters to annex the text in order to tell their own stories is read as a political gesture. The paper also explores the development of the ‘mysteries novel’ as an expression of the urbanisation of industrial Britain, and the contemporary critical debate surrounding Reynolds’ politics, seeking an answer to the question of whether or not he was truly radical or merely opportunist. I argue that the chaos of the new urban environment is reflected in the structure of Reynolds’ text, in which competing narrative codes mirror the incoherent experience of the city, anticipating the postmodern novel and allowing Reynolds’ genuine political commentary to co-exist within a gothic and sensational frame that he equally exploits, satirises and subverts.

- by Stephen Carver
- •
- Victorian Literature, London Writing, Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew

Presentación del ciclo de charlas en el que viajaremos por las grandes ciudades europeas del siglo XIX, tomando como punto de partida a un escritor célebre. En esta entrega analizamos el Londres victoriano de la época de Charles Dickens.... more

- by Carmen Cabrejas and +1
- •
- History Of London, Early Modern London, 19th Century British (Literature), London Writing

The tramp, living on the city streets, is the ultimate expression of the motif of the urban walker, and embodies for Peter Ackroyd the relationship between London and its vulnerable citizens. However, the vagrant goes beyond the sufferings of the perpetual victim to embrace a mythic London where tramps are kings, and where refuge and closure are to be found.

- by David Charnick
- •
- Psychogeography, London Writing, London, Urban Myths

8500 word essay - This paper explores what Hugh Trevor-Roper called ‘the invention of tradition’ through Scott’s Waverley novels, Ainsworth’s creation of the legend of Dick Turpin’s ‘Ride to York,’ and his rehabilitation of the then dilapidated Tower of London through his historical novel of the same name. The paper considers myths of national identity, and uses the legend of King Arthur as a frame. The tile is taken from a quotation from Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841).

- by Stephen Carver
- •
- Victorian Literature, National Identity, London Writing, Sir Walter Scott

Reflections on being recorded for Dan Snow's History Hit podcast

- by David Charnick
- •
- English Literature, Literature, Podcasting, Victorian Literature

The article explores the novel Capital by John Lanchester from the space perspective. It shows how the characters in the novel reshape London and how London in turn reshapes their identities. It suggests a framework for the study of the... more

- by Sergey Saveliev
- •
- English Literature, Novel, London Writing, City Novel