Jeremy Lewis
Metroland
The Freedoms of Suburbia
By Paul Barker
Frances Lincoln 240pp £25
One day in the early Seventies my wife and I found ourselves driving through East Sheen, en route to Richmond Park. East Sheen is a featureless London suburb, halfway between Putney and Richmond, and as we drove past the serried ranks of semis, with their clip-on Tudor beams, bosomy bow windows and stained glass panels in every front door, I turned to my wife and said, ‘Can you imagine anything more frightful than having to live in a place like this?’ I had been brought up to despise the suburbs, and ‘suburban’ was the most damning of epithets, synonymous with (or so one imagined) dull conformity, malicious tittle-tattle, and boring-looking bank managers mowing the lawn. Later that year we exchanged our flat in central London for one of the despised semis in East Sheen. We have been there ever since, and I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else.
My Pauline conversion was far from unique. In the 1930s John Betjeman was an enthusiastic devotee of the Modern movement, but he ended his days as the great celebrant of Metroland; and Paul Barker is another former suburb-hater who has seen the light. ‘Suburbia is derided by everyone
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm