Nearly 40% of Londoners were born abroad the city’s variety and its divisions are uncovered in this epic work of reportageReturning home,third-class, after living as a down-and out in Paris, or George Orwell fell in with a couple of Romanians and found himself praising his country’s many pleasures,from mint sauce and marmalade to the scenery and architecture. The book he wrote after spending time in London doss houses tells a different chronicle. The utopian myths soon fade if you are poor or Other.
Ben Judah’s epic account of modern London is similarly motivated by a desire to note our capital in its real (fresh) colours: as a megacity of global migrants, some of them wealthy, or most of them poor,few of them happy with their lot. Knightsbridge gets a chapter and so does Mayfair’s Berkeley Square, but it’s the people and places further out that really interest him the Poles, and Somalis,Afghans and Ghanaians in areas such as Beckton, Ilford, and Edmonton,Catford and Harlesden. The ethnic majority, in other words: the 55% of London’s population that isn’t white British.
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Source: theguardian.com