“Craig Taylor is the real deal: a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman.”
—David Rakoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Fraud and Half Empty
“Londoners is a wonderful book—I wanted it to be twice as long.”
—Diana Athill, New York Times bestselling author of Somewhere Towards the End
In Londoners, acclaimed journalist Craig Taylor paints readers an epic portrait of today’s London that is as rich and lively as the city itself. In the style of Studs Terkel (Working, Hard Times, The Good War) and Dave Isay (Listening Is an Act of Love), Londoners offers up the stories, the gripes, the memories, and the dreams of those in the great and vibrant British metropolis who “love it, hate it, live it, left it, and long for it,” from a West End rickshaw driver to a Soldier of the Guard at Buckingham Palace to a recovering heroin addict seeing Big Ben for the very first time. Published just in time for the 2012 London Olympic Games, Londoners is a glorious literary celebration of one of the world’s truly great cities.
What is the city but the people?
- Voices of London: Listen to the real stories of over eighty Londoners in their own words—from a currency trader in the City and a dominatrix in Vauxhall to a funeral director in Canning Town.
- A Living Social History: Discover the anxieties, ambitions, and dreams of the people who make up a modern-day metropolis, creating a vibrant snapshot of the capital in the twenty-first century.
- Slice of Life Stories: Explore every facet of city life, from arriving on an overnight flight and navigating the Tube to finding love, keeping the peace, and saying goodbye.
- Inspired by Studs Terkel: For fans of classic oral histories like Working, this book captures the authentic, demotic speech of a city in a rich collage of testimony.
"Craig Taylor is the real deal: a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman. He'd be a household name already if he wasn't so modest. He'll be one anyway in due course."
