Lights Out for the Territory

Iain Sinclair has to be one of the most widely read and well-connected scholars-commentators on London. The challenge, however, any reader of Sinclair is how to take something intelligible away from this corpus of knowledge. Part of both the joy and frustration of reading Sinclair is that much of his text, perhaps deliberately, reads a stream of consciousness, blending fact and fiction. It is also not short on invective, diatribe and digression. Think of it as Herman Melville doing late 20th/early 21st century London. Lights Out for the Territory is generally regarded as one of his more accessible works. For a 2020 reader, it reads a little as a time capsule. One is taken back to the late '90s, the tail end of the Conservative era, although remarkably little is mentioned regarding New Labour. In the work, Sinclair and his collaborator, the photographer Mark Atkins, embark on a series of London walks and encounters. Even if many of the references/asides were lost on me, one certainly gets a novel perspective on London, its hidden aspects and its ever-evolving personality. Much that he writes is spot on, incisive and to the point, even now. Some chapters are somewhat let down by Sinclair's tendency to see conspiracy theories everywhere. Nonetheless, this was mostly enjoyable and definitely worth the perseverance. My favourite segments were on the City, (“Bulls and Bears”), and the South Bank near Vauxhall, (“Lord Archer's Prospects”).

By Iain Sinclair