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3.5
London, Burning
ByPublisher Description
London, Burning is a novel about the end of the 1970s, and the end of an era. It concerns a nation divided against itself, a government trembling on the verge of collapse, a city fearful of what is to come, and a people bitterly suspicious of one another. In other words, it is also a novel about now.
Vicky Tress is a young policewoman on the rise who becomes involved in a corruption imbroglio with CID. Hannah Strode is an ambitious young reporter with a speciality for skewering the rich and powerful. Callum Conlan is a struggling Irish academic and writer who falls in with the wrong people. While Freddie Selves is a hugely successful theatre impresario stuck deep in a personal and political mire of his own making. These four characters, strangers at the start, happen to meet and affect the course of each other's lives profoundly.
The story plots an unpredictable path through a city choked by strikes and cowed by bomb warnings. It reverberates to the sound of alarm and protest, of police sirens, punk rock, street demos, of breaking glass and breaking hearts in dusty pubs. As the clock ticks down towards a general election old alliances totter and the new broom of capitalist enterprise threatens to sweep all before it. It is funny and dark, violent but also moving.
Vicky Tress is a young policewoman on the rise who becomes involved in a corruption imbroglio with CID. Hannah Strode is an ambitious young reporter with a speciality for skewering the rich and powerful. Callum Conlan is a struggling Irish academic and writer who falls in with the wrong people. While Freddie Selves is a hugely successful theatre impresario stuck deep in a personal and political mire of his own making. These four characters, strangers at the start, happen to meet and affect the course of each other's lives profoundly.
The story plots an unpredictable path through a city choked by strikes and cowed by bomb warnings. It reverberates to the sound of alarm and protest, of police sirens, punk rock, street demos, of breaking glass and breaking hearts in dusty pubs. As the clock ticks down towards a general election old alliances totter and the new broom of capitalist enterprise threatens to sweep all before it. It is funny and dark, violent but also moving.
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3.5
“London in the late 1970s is on a knife edge. Jim Callaghan is barely holding on to power with the unions striking everywhere and his rival is a woman, Margaret Thatcher. The IRA bombing campaigns on the mainland are high profile and the police are corrupt. In this maelstrom a disparate set of characters spin in and out of each others lives - the lecturer, the impresario, the policewoman, the journalist - all are part of the events.
Anthony Quinn has written a series of novels which chart modern history over the last 150 years and each offers a superb insight into time and place through engaging and complex characters. Here, it is easy to see where the plots are heading but that doesn't make them any less exciting. The role of sexism in the last seventies is writ large from Fleet Street and the Met to the humble secretary, also the fate of the Irish. It is pitch perfect writing from a true master”
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