WRITER’S READS

Tom Chivers is a writer, publisher and arts producer. His book London Clay (reviewed in the August 2021 issue of Geographical) is out now

● Lights Out for the Territory by Iain Sinclair (1998)

The guvna. Maestro. Top dog of London writing, much imitated but never bettered. Lights Out was my gateway drug; I’ve never looked at the city in the same way since.

● The Grassling by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett (2019)

A ‘geological memoir’ of growing up in rural Devon by a poet of English and Kenyan heritage. An intricate, strange and quietly moving portrayal of family and land.

● Scarp by Nick Papadimitriou (2012)

Deep topographer Papadimitriou obsessively walks the landscape around his home on the outskirts of north-west London, tapping the history and atmosphere of the north Middlesex/ south Hertfordshire escarpment from which this engagingly off-kilter book takes its name.

● Place-names in the Landscape by Margaret Gelling (1984)

My bible. It does what it says on the tin.

● Ordinary People by Diana Evans (2018)

Evans tells the story of two Black British couples in their late 30s whose lives are beginning to unravel. Beautifully written and observed.

● London’s Lost Rivers by Tom Bolton (2011)

A vital guide for anyone who has ever wondered how Fleet Street got its name or why you can hear the sound of running water in Sloane Square tube station.

● Place by Allen Fisher (2005)

This landmark piece of London writing - originally composed during the 1970s - splices together history, geography, etymology and documentary reportage in a style influenced by Charles Olson’s ‘open field’ poetics. Once you are attuned to its methods, it’s pure magic.

● Hollow Places by Christopher Hadley (2019)

The subject of this strikingly unusual book is a tombstone in a 14th-century Hertfordshire church that depicts the slaying of a local dragon. What in another’s hands would be painfully repetitious is, here, masterfully done.