The eccentric, manic, and often moving collaborative explorations of London’s hidden streets, cemeteries, parks, canals, pubs, and personalities by photographer Marc Atkins and writer Iain Sinclair were first recorded in Sinclair’s highly acclaimed 1997 book Lights Out for the Territory, praised in the Guardian as “one of the most remarkable books ever written on London.” Liquid City is a splendid follow-up—presented here in an updated format and with a new introduction and additional images—documenting Atkins and Sinclair’s further peregrinations through the city’s eastern and south-eastern quadrants, famous as London’s grittier but culturally rich quarters.
An array of famous and lesser-known writers, booksellers, and film-makers slip in and out of Sinclair’s annotations, as do memories and remnants of the East End’s criminal mobs and physical landmarks as diverse as the Thames barrier and Karl Marx’s grave in Archway cemetery. All of it is documented in Atkins’s striking, atmospheric photographs and Sinclair’s impressionistic prose that marries psychology with geography. Cued by the title, readers will follow the Thames as it flows silently through the photographic and textual narrative, traversing a city that is always fluid, full at once of continuities and surprises.