"[A] marvelous essayist . You don't read Iain Sinclair just because he's an expert on London's multilayered urban life; what matters, as with Joyce, is his prose, page after page of verbal riffs and astonishments. His books, then, are hybrids, like so much of Joyce -- and Kafka, W.G. Sebald, Robert Walser and Georges Perec. This isn't a book you can race through. Instead you'll want to take your time, look around and occasionally listen in on conversations, as you saunter along with Sinclair on these rambles into a strange and vanishing London." --Michael Dirda in The Washington Post "A wonderful observer, a spot-on imagist of the urban scene.

Sinclair has many attractions as a writer: a powerful gift for imagery and phrase-making; a keen curiosity; sympathy; anger at the destruction of the past and the public realm; vituperation; humor." --The New York Review of Books "Sinclair's language is special and specialized, muscular, unsentimental, immodest in its ornateness, "inimitable" in the sense (true of so many great stylists) that it's quite easy to imitate badly, but impossibly hard to imitate well." --The Los Angeles Review of Books "Sinclair's appreciation and frustration with London is conveyed through a complicated style that defies linear reading. Much like painted walls by artist Banksy, this city collage captures the strife inherent in loving an ancient yet modern metropolis." --Booklist "Readers interested in popular culture and the history of London and who enjoy challenging and provocative essays will find this volume at times enraging, amusing, and eye-opening." --Library Journal "Sinclair is a prose artist of rare talent." --3AM Magazine ". If this is truly Sinclair's final word on the city as he claims, he has saved the best for last.

" --STARRED Review, Publishers Weekly "Readers interested in the history of London will greatly enjoy tracing the author's walks, and even those who think they know everything about London may be pleasantly surprised. This is no ordinary memoir, but we wouldn't expect such from one of England's most inventive psychogeographic writers. Patience will reward each reader in his or her own way." --STARRED Kirkus Review.