My Favourite London Devils by Iain Sinclair is a collection of essays about some of his biggest literary influences, past and present who have helped shape his books of fiction and non-fiction alike.
Published by Tangerine Press in 2016 and illustrated throughout by Dave Mckean, Sinclair covers Angela Carter, Michael Moorcock, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Ackroyd, J.G. Ballard, Brian Catling, Jack Kerouac, Arthur Machen and others.
His chapter on Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent is particularly good. He talks of the horror of the July 7th 2005 London Bombings and the suicide bomber on the number 30 bus interspersed with the threat of the IRA in the seventies and eighties and Conrad’s character in The Secret Agent:
The driver of the 30 bus, I am told, began to walk west, in the aftershock of the explosion, still covered in blood. He walked for seven miles, through the hallucination of London, deaf to the sound of the city, until he found himself in Acton. Geography was confused. His bus shouldn’t have been in Tavistock Square. It had been diverted. Only walking, entering the dream, could repair the hurt.
His recollections of time spent with Angela Carter is warm, melancholic and touching. Signing first editions for him, writing the foreword to his novel Downriver and the London Review of Books lunch thrown in their combined honour in what he describes as the end of an era in long, boozy lunches.
If you are new to Sinclair then this is a good book to dip your toe into his waters, it paves the way into understanding his wandering mind which matches his epic London walks. Sinclair weaves biographic detail with personal stories, he has a unique ability to add more than meets the eye, an inner sense that has driven his curiosity across the decades. He is most at home when firmly embedded in the heart of the city, safe amongst the ghosts of London’s past with a critical eye on the present and the future.
Further reading:
Categories: The Reading Room
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