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Londoners
Londoners
Londoners
Audiobook14 hours

Londoners

Written by Craig Taylor

Narrated by Jo Hall, Steven Crossley, Anna Bentinck and

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Craig Taylor, an acclaimed journalist, playwright and writer, spent five years exploring the city and listening to its residents to create this amazingly rich portrait of London.

Here are the voices of London - rich and poor, native and immigrant, women and men. From the woman whose voice announces the stations on the London Underground to the man who plants the trees along Oxford Street; from a Pakistani currency trader to a Guardsman at Buckingham Palace - together, these voices paint a vivid, epic and wholly fresh portrait of Twenty-First Century London.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2012
ISBN9781471208812
Londoners
Author

Craig Taylor

Craig Taylor's non-fiction has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times and the Globe and Mail. His fiction has appeared in the Mississippi Review. He wrote One Million Tiny Plays About Britain for the Guardian's Weekend magazine for several years. Craig publishes Hamish Hamilton's Five Dials magazine as well as his own photocopied magazines, including The Review of Everything I've Ever Encountered and Dark Tales of Clapham. His first book, Return To Akenfield, was published by Granta in 2006, and the play of the novel toured the UK in 2009.

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Reviews for Londoners

Rating: 3.8358778748091606 out of 5 stars
4/5

131 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Terrible narration! The stories are pretty boring but the people narrating the characters are awful. They sound so hammy and fake that it completely ruins what they are saying.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Not as exciting as I thought it would be. Some of the narratives were pretty boring or depressing. London is still a place I'd like to visit but this book made me rethink moving there one day! It is interesting to learn about a city from people who live there, visited there or left there. Too bad they didn't interview a librarian in London. That would have been a good one! Overall, city life had its ups & downs no matter who you are or where you are.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    great book, but wish the chapters were separated by story and not by section. makes it extremely difficult to navigate to different people.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book Title: "Londoners”Author: Craig TaylorPublished By: Ecco Book an imprint of Harper CollinsAge Recommended: 17+Reviewed By: Kitty BullardRaven Rating: 4.5Review: I have always wanted to go to London, to walk the streets of England and see exactly how they live there. I still have the desire to go, perhaps more now than ever before. I can say that reading Craig Taylor’s book, “Londoners” was almost like being there. The stories are fantastic and vibrant the writing is fluid and keeps you interested. This is truly a great book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wow. I laughed, I cried, I empathised. Every thought and feeling I've ever had about London, give or take, is expressed by someone in this book. I don't know if people who don't have a very strong connection with London would get it but I want this book forever.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kind of obsessed with London lately. This starts out great, very much like classic Studs Terkel. Gets kind of repetetive by the end. But still quite readable, a slice of London as seen by its citizens.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, an interesting and perceptive anthology of various Londoners' views of their city. Most of the oral histories give at least some insights into the nature of living and working in London, which comes off as a busy, vibrant multicultural metropolis that still attracts people from around the country. There were a few stories I didn't like, as they were overwhelming critical, in a very overgeneralized way -- and, because of that, they said much more about the speakers than about where they lived. (It's an odd choice on Taylor's part to open his book with one such negative piece.) Still worth the read for those interested in London, if not up to Studs Terkel's best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, an interesting and perceptive anthology of various Londoners' views of their city. Most of the oral histories give at least some insights into the nature of living and working in London, which comes off as a busy, vibrant multicultural metropolis that still attracts people from around the country. There were a few stories I didn't like, as they were overwhelming critical, in a very overgeneralized way -- and, because of that, they said much more about the speakers than about where they lived. (It's an odd choice on Taylor's part to open his book with one such negative piece.) Still worth the read for those interested in London, if not up to Studs Terkel's best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book Title: "Londoners”Author: Craig TaylorPublished By: Ecco Book an imprint of Harper CollinsAge Recommended: 17+Reviewed By: Kitty BullardRaven Rating: 4.5Review: I have always wanted to go to London, to walk the streets of England and see exactly how they live there. I still have the desire to go, perhaps more now than ever before. I can say that reading Craig Taylor’s book, “Londoners” was almost like being there. The stories are fantastic and vibrant the writing is fluid and keeps you interested. This is truly a great book!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Londoners. An excellent concept for a book. I had great expectations but was disappointed. This compendium of 83 interviews ( and 400 pages) of Londoners seemed a sure thing, and in fact it delivered some excellent commentary by the subjects, but rarely. In too many cases, one could have scratched the word "London" in the discussion and replaced it with "Philadelphia" or 'Cairo' without being any less factual. So, some interesting subjects, but it didn't deliver the promised insight into London life, the London experience, etc. etc. Perhaps there were six interviews of London residents, e.g., the voice of the woman who announces tube stations,that gave me insights into London 2011/12 and/or were particularly interesting. A good idea that doesn't deliver. Strengths - made me realize that there is probably not another city in the world that doesn't present the diverse ethnic background that London does.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderful set of accounts from people on their views of London - mixed, some happy, some sad - but a great overall read. Recommended - particularly good for reading in small chunks.