Londoners, who do we think we are?

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Craig Taylor10 April 2012

When I set out to interview some Londoners for a book project, I didn't know it would take half a decade. Perhaps I was naïve but I wanted to assemble an oral history of London, a panoramic portrait of the city and as much about Londoners as about London itself.

I knew I could never write a book where most of the research took place in the library. I wanted to know what was happening now, who was here, how they had arrived, why they stuck around. So I visited every one of the 32 boroughs and used about 300 AA batteries to power my little digital recorder. I came away with a new appreciation of the complexity of this ever-changing place, and also of those who work in it and with it.

When I started writing the book, lost in the ocean of possibility, I downloaded a list of all the English verbs and went through them, highlighting any that could even remotely be applied to London - bewitching London, cleaning London, cremating London, and so on. Then I went out and found the people who enacted these verbs.

I didn't mean to gather almost a million words of conversation - everything from boasts to anecdotes to meanderings to tips.

Once the city started talking it was hard to ask the manicurist to stop, or the currency trader or the taxi driver, the squatter, or the Wiccan priestess. The book became a collage of more than 90 voices. It contains accounts from the great mash of people who have found themselves here on the banks of the Thames. It is also, I realised near the end of the process, about my London.

Many of the individuals voiced what I'd often felt about living in this city, how I had been rewarded and hurt by it and elevated and knocked down for 11 years.

Researching the book took me to squats and mosques and shops and parks and the glossy offices of the City of London. I went way out east to New Spitalfields Market to follow the fruit traders as they worked through the night.

It took me to a City of London crematorium and the office of the Westminster marriage registrar, into the backs of cabs, rickshaws, minicabs and into too many coffee shops to count - the cracked dreariness of an Ealing Starbucks and the whoosh of the proper machines at Soho's Bar Italia. (I don't even drink coffee).

It took me to pubs like you wouldn't believe - some full of hordes of City boys or quiet lifetime drinkers in Kilburn. I owned a great pair of shoes at the beginning, the kind of shoes you keep taking back to the cobbler to resole. Around year four he shook his head. These can't be saved.

After finishing the book, I came away with more confusion, more awe, and a nagging suspicion that every escalator in the Underground holds enough people to fill a book with memory and anecdote. I now know how hard people struggle to get here, dig their fingernails in and stay. I learned that the stories circulating London right now are just as rich, weird and tragic as they were in Mayhew's time.

Ultimately I learned that my book was surrounded by shadow - the shadows of all the different possible versions. What kind of book would I have ended up with if I'd shown up in Newham on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday? What kind of book would I have if had spoken to the younger police officer rather than the older one? So who is a Londoner? Shouldn't a book called Londoners answer that?

I never did manage to sort out just who is, and who isn't. True Londoners, I was told more than once, are real Cockneys, born within earshot of the Bow Bells. Or born within the ring of the M25 motorway. Or who have spent a great deal of time in London - at least 70 years, or 52 years, or 33 years, 11 years, eight years, years or, in one case, just over a month.

"But it was a very good month," this new Londoner said. "I've totally forgotten Macclesfield."

A Londoner would never call himself a Londoner, I was told. On this housing estate the postcode is what's important, I was told.

"The only thing I know", and this I was told in a very loud pub in Cricklewood, "is that a real Londoner, a real one, would never, ever, ever eat at one of those bloody Angus bloody Steak Houses in the West End. That's how you tell," the man said, wavering, steadying himself with a hand on the bar. "That's how you tell."

Was the definition even that important? What I did learn is that those who choose to stay here often develop within them a deep and abiding love that coexists alongside an occasional, flaring hatred. Perhaps that's the definition I came away with. A true Londoner can never love London outright. You love it when the autumn sun is shining; you want to move to the countryside when the night bus doesn't show. It's a complicated affair.

Londoners by Craig Taylor is published today, Granta books, £25

London's disparate voices

Mistress Absolute
Dominatrix
Different areas have different feelings. I'm much more comfortable in south London than I am north. That's just me. I've always lived in south London, although there's one dungeon in north London which evokes a lot of happy times. It's closed down now. It's actually near where I have my nails done. Every time I go up and have my nails done I think, I must ... Oh, it's not there any more. Different pockets of London have different feels to them. That's not something you can verbalise, it's just a feeling. I'm sure the feeling I get will be slightly different from someone else's. But then you wouldn't have the specific good memories of whipping someone's ass in Kentish Town.

Noel Gaughan
Driving instructor
I love roundabouts. I absolutely think they're the best invention and I don't care who invented the pen, the Biro; whoever invented the roundabout, they should be up there on that plinth that they've got going on in Trafalgar Square. You can have a little bit of fun with it, you know. It's like a samba. Because in this city, sometimes you just come to a sudden gridlock and you think, well I'm waiting for him, he's waiting for me, he's waiting for him and you've got everyone looking at everyone - who will make the first move?

Martins Imhangbe
Actor
You know about postcode wars? If you live in SE13 and I live in SE14 then we might not get along with each other. A lot of people don't know what they're fighting for because there's this old thing about Peckham and Lewisham. It's just one of them things that has been passed down and they don't know why they hate each other. If you ask a lot of young people in Lewisham, why don't you like Peckham? They will say, oh, because I don't like them, innit. That's the reason. There's no deeper thing.

Emmajo Read
Nightclub door attendant
London isn't as 24-hour a city as it likes to think it is, but in Farringdon there are three 24-hour caffs, a 24-hour diner and a pub that opens at 7am for the guys in the meat market. Sometimes I'll be pissed off after a really horrible night on the door and I go to get a coffee and there'll be like an Eastern European woman behind the counter who can barely speak English and these guys covered in blood from the meat market and some cabby slagging off whatever ... I love that. You know, that's Farringdon.

Smartie
Taxi driver
Going to Camden in the early Eighties, people who were from different boroughs, especially Essex, would think that's way out. Them people are crazy up there. Well, I'd go there to see what they'd be wearing. I'd see what I could take from that. You'd ape people, and you'd twist it the way you'd want to. I still have things from that period hanging in my wardrobe. I don't wear them, but I can't bring myself to sell them.

Ruth Fordham
Manicurist
I've got Germans, Dutch, South Africans, Americans, a lot of Romanians, Latvians, Eastern Europeans. I've even got some English people come in the odd night. I deal with anyone. Cross-dressers, you name it. They usually come in when it gets dark. You know, it's like visiting a brothel in some ways. They walk up the street, look both sides and then come in. It's brilliant. There's no boundaries where nails are concerned.

Adam Byatt
Chef
Growing up in Essex, going up West was for Christmas lights and to see a play with your nan every five years. It was a special thing. But suddenly here I was every day of my working life. When I'd come home, everybody would ask, what's it like? They were frightened to go. You get stabbed, you get killed, come on! I worked in Mayfair and we were just like, this is stupid. We were exposed to fantastic bars, great clubs, new fashion. We can be individuals here.

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