Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

Craig Taylor

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

“A rich and exuberant kaleidoscopic portrait of a great, messy, noisy, daunting, inspiring, maddening, enthralling, constantly shifting Rorschach test of a place. . . . Delightful. . . . In Taylor’s patient and sympathetic hands, regular people become poets, philosophers, orators.” --  New York Times Book Review Londoners is a fresh and compulsively readable view of one of the world's most fascinating cities–a vibrant narrative portrait of the London of our own time, featuring unforgettable stories told by the real people who make the city hum. Acclaimed writer and editor Craig Taylor has spent years traversing every corner of the city, getting to know the most interesting Londoners, including the voice of the London Underground, a West End rickshaw driver, an East End nightclub doorperson, a mounted soldier of the Queen's Life Guard at Buckingham Palace, and a couple who fell in love at the Tower of London—and now live there. With candor and humor, this diverse cast—rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant, men and women (and even a Sarah who used to be a George)—shares indelible tales that capture the city as never before. Together, these voices paint a vivid, epic, and wholly original portrait of twenty-first-century London in all its breadth, from Notting Hill to Brixton, from Piccadilly Circus to Canary Wharf, from an airliner flying into London Heathrow Airport to Big Ben and Tower Bridge, and down to the deepest tunnels of the London Underground. Londoners is the autobiography of one of the world's greatest cities.

Publication Year: 2012


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  • garrido30
    Mar 29, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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  • lapetite
    Apr 14, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    Rating: 3.5

    The book tries its best to answer the following question: What defines a Londoner? Is a Londoner someone who was born in London? Is it someone who moved there 20 years ago? 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Or is a Londoner someone who knows how the city works, how it breathes. Someone that can navigate the tube and not get run over while crossing the street.

    Composed by 85 (give or take) stories about Londoners, it was just what I needed after finding myself afflicted with London sickness. That feeling you get when you miss London with every fiber of your being and you wish Floo Powder existed just so you run to the nearest chimney and get going. London is highly diverse city so it makes sense that all these stories carry that very same diversity. Not one of these voices is the same. Mr. Taylor did an amazing job gathering all these tales from people from all walks of life.

    I agree with other reviewers that the middle did tend to drag a bit. When I reached that particular story about the artist that collected hair from the tube floor... man, that was disgusting. I needed a little break. But beyond that, it's a wonderful window to understand the dichotomy that rules the lives of those that live in London.

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