London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

'London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.'

Robert Elms has seen his beloved city change beyond all imagining. London in his lifetime has morphed from a piratical, bomb-scarred playground, to a swish cosmopolitan metropolis. Motorways driven through lost communities, accents changing, skyscrapers appearing. Yet still it remains to him the greatest place on earth.

Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs and a small community declare itself an independent nation; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to world-changing events.

Reviews

A love letter to the capital . . . Part memoir, part cultural history, it sees him embarking on a voyage through the London of his youth and that of his forebears while assessing the city of today . . . He offers warm and often vivid snapshots of the capital of the '60s and '70s * * Guardian * *
[Robert Elms'] observations are fresh, incisive and sometimes revelatory . . . His love of his city shines from every page * * Observer * *
London Made Us is a marvellously detailed and wonderfully evocative memoir of London trembling on the border of extinction. Our tears and dreams are made of this -- PETER ACKROYD
This great city of ours has been truly blessed with some notable social and historical chroniclers . . . Robert Elms is a worthy addition in my humble opinion. This book will quite literally give the reader, whether London-born or not, the most fascinating in-depth history lesson of my beloved city (warts an' all) to date. The reading of this book should be made a compulsory addition to the curriculum of every state and private school in the capital -- NORMAN JAY MBE
Robert Elms's bright, sparky, self-aware homage to his home . . . Elms writes as he speaks . . . His voice surfs on waves of sentimental passion and it, too, conjures up a vanishing world * * Times Literary Supplement * *
This is a freewheeling book that revels in the tales it tells - and it tells plenty . . . A delight * * Evening Standard * *
A celebration of [London's] utterly vital past, and a stinging critique of present pseudo-posh . . . Elms is good at taking a little piece of our hearts . . . But he gives, too. His stories are funny and memorable * * Spectator * *

Author Bio

Robert Elms is a broadcaster and writer, well-loved for his eponymous radio show on BBC Radio London. Elms started out as a journalist, writing for The Face and NME. He is a Londoner through and through, growing up in West London and living in the city for most of his life.

The Robert Elms Show is a celebration of every aspect of the tumultuous city. He interviews Londoners - famous and non-famous - and every week looks at all sides of the city, be that architecture, language, music, clothes and more.

Elms is the author of two previous works of non-fiction, The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads and Spain: A Portrait After the General, and a novel, In Search of the Crack. He lives in London with his wife and children.

@RobertElms