Five writers grapple with reality and fiction, and the alchemical process of turning life into art. As Iain Sinclair frames it in his luminous introduction, they try to explain the impulse to write 'by way of personal anecdote, revelation or hopeful punt in the dark.'

Voted by the London Times as one of the best writers since 1945, Michael Moorcock was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has won almost all the major Science Fiction, Fantasy, and lifetime achievement awards including the “Howie,” the Prix Utopiales and the Stoker. Best known for his rule-breaking SF and Fantasy, including the classic Elric and Hawkmoon series, he is also the author of several graphic novels.Now, in London Peculi...

'A beautiful book.' Daily Mail'Exhilaratingly curious.' Evening Standard'Gripping.' Spectator'Brilliant.' Penelope Lively'Indefatigably researched.' Country Life'Beautifully illustrated.' MonocleMudlarking, the act of searching the Thames foreshore for items of value, has a long tradition in En...

Renowned author Iain Sinclair follows in the footsteps of photographer John Deakin, whose chronicles of Soho life - and the world of Francis Bacon and his friends - has so influenced our perception of that generation's work. In this bold fictionalisation, Sinclair enters the underworld of Deakin's life and imagination. The result is an engrossing, utterly unique portrait of a man who some felt was a fallen angel, and others, the devil himself.

Rodinsky's world was that of the East European Jewry, cabbalistic speculation, an obsession with language as code and terrible loss. He touched the imagination of artist Rachel Lichtenstein, whose grandparents had left Poland in the 1930s. This text weaves together Lichtenstein's quest for Rodinsky - which took her to Poland, to Israel and around Jewish London - with Iain Sinclair's meditations on her journey into her own past and on the Whitechapel he has reinvented in his own writing.

'A remarkable book; surprisingly gripping and often very moving ... at once disorientating and illuminating.' - Robert MacfarlaneWe shape ourselves, and are shaped in return, by the walls that contain us. Buildings affect how we sleep, work, socialise and even breathe. They can isolate and endanger us but they can also heal us. We project our hopes and fears onto buildings, while they absorb our histories.In Living With Buildings, ...

David Cronenberg's Crash (1996) brought down a storm of controversy and opprobrium when it was first screened in London. And yet it's a cool, controlled, formal film, unsensational, more analytic than titillating, a brilliant exposé of modern pathologies. It has almost none of the violence and explicit sexual content of the J.G. Ballard novel from which it is adapted. What is the relationship between Ballard himself and the character 'James Ballard' in Crash?In th...

One Londoner gambles on his own life in this lost classic by 'one of the great English Jewish novelists' ( Times), introduced by Iain Sinclair.'Terrific. Propulsive, funny and touching.' Sebastian Faulks'A fascinating snapshot of a lost London world, by a remarkable neglected writer.' Sarah WatersA wonderfully enduring novel . . . A great rediscovery.' William Boyd'Perfect . . . Capt...

‘A book full of richness, unexpected enticements, short sharp shocks and breathtaking writing’ GuardianWelcome to the real, unauthorised London: the disappeared, the unapproved, the unvoiced, the mythical and the all-but forgotten. The perfect companion to the city.‘Exhilarating, truly wonderful, a cavalcade of eloquent writing. London demands an anthology like this to remind us of the irascible quirkiness of its residents, and we have Sinclair to ...

Liquid City documents the collaboration between Iain Sinclair and photographer Marc Atkins and their eccentric, manic, often moving explorations of London’s hidden streets, cemeteries, canals, parks, pubs and personalities. Consisting of striking, atmospheric photographs by Atkins, including many new additions, and with a new introduction by Sinclair, the book focuses on London’s eastern and southeastern quadrants. An array of famous and lesser-known writers, booksellers and film-...

The visionary writer Iain Sinclair turns his sights to the Beat Generation in America in his most epic journey yet"How best to describe Iain Sinclair?" asks Robert Macfarlane in The Guardian. "A literary mud-larker and tip-picker? A Travelodge tramp (his phrase)? A middle-class dropout with a gift for bullshit (also his phrase)? A toxicologist of the twenty-first-century landscape? A historian of countercultures and occulted pasts? An intemperate WALL-E, c...

The metropolis is a site of endless making and unmaking. From the attempt to imagine a 'city-symphony' to the cinematic tradition that runs from Walter Ruttmann to Terence Davies, Restless Cities traces the idiosyncratic character of the metropolitan city from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first-century megalopolis. With explorations of phenomena including nightwalking, urbicide, property, commuting and recycling, this wide-ranging new book identifies and traces the pattern...