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Ben Judah

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This Is London: Life and Death in the World City Paperback – September 1, 2017

by Ben Judah (Author)

4.2 749 ratings

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This is the new London: an immigrant city. Over one-third of Londoners were born abroad, with half arriving since the millennium. This has utterly transformed the capital, for better and for worse. Ben Judah is an acclaimed foreign correspondent, but here he turns his reporter's gaze on home, immersing himself in the hidden world of London's immigrants to reveal the city in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers and witch-doctors. From the backrooms of its mosques, Tube tunnels and nightclubs to the frontlines of its streets, Judah has supped with oligarchs and spent nights sleeping rough, worked on building sites and talked business with prostitutes; he's heard stories of heartbreaking failure, but also witnessed extraordinary acts of compassion. This book explodes fossilized myths and offers a fresh, exciting portrait of what it's like to live, work, fall in love, raise children, grow old and die in London now. Simultaneously intimate and epic, here is a compulsive and deeply sympathetic book on this dizzying world city from one of our brightest new writers.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Picador
Publication date

September 1, 2017
Dimensions

5.25 x 1 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

1447276272
ISBN-13

978-1447276272
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Ben Judah
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Judah grabs hold of London and shakes out its secrets." —Economist

"Full of nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others. . . . It recalls the journalism of Orwell." —Financial Times

"Work of this sort really is necessary; this is the stuff we must think about it we are ever to get to grips (assuming it's not too late already) with what lies ahead for our cities. Every MP should be given a copy immediately. On every page lies and uncomfortable truth, in every paragraph sheer horror. It is a book that demonstrably improves the eyesight. Read it, and the streets will look different: I guarantee it. Above all, more than I can possibly say, I admired its author's pluck, determination, compassion and refusal to judge—and I'd like him to know that some of the stories he told will haunt me for a long time to come." —New Statesman

"Truly extraordinary . . . as raw, powerful, unflinching, witty, engaging, shocking, in-your-face and occasionally both heartwarming and heartbreaking as the great but complex and flawed city it chronicles. I've lived in London for three decades yet found something I didn't know about it on virtually every page." —Andrew Roberts, author, Napoleon: A Life

About the Author

Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, and his writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Evening Standard, the Financial Times and Standpoint. In 2016, he was chosen as one of Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 in European media.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; UK ed. edition (September 1, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1447276272
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1447276272
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,301,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,747 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #6,847 in Great Britain History (Books)

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4.2 749 ratings

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4.2 out of 5

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NICK EVANS

London’s grubby hidden side

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2021

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Journalist and author Ben Judah explores the underbelly of London: talking to those hunched figures in grubby sleeping bags in underpasses who most city dwellers hurry past, eyes averted.

He declares in his opening paragraph: “I have to see everything for myself. I don’t trust statistics. I don’t trust columnists. I don’t trust self-appointed spokesmen. I have to make up my own mind. This is why I am shivering again, in Victoria Coach Station, at 6am”.

Why is he there? Because “I was born in London, but I no longer recognise this city... It’s a London that has changed beyond recognition, and exhibits a more extreme contrast of poverty and opulence.” A short walk from Buckingham Palace, Victoria Coach Station is the arrival point for tens of thousands of immigrants every year.

“There is a whole illegal city in London. This is where 70 per cent of Britain’s illegal immigrants are hiding. This is a city of more than 600,000 people, making it larger than Glasgow or Edinburgh… This is the hidden city: hidden from the statistics, hidden from the poverty rates, hidden from the hunger rates. They all discount them: a minimum 5 per cent of the population.”

One of his most vivid characters is a Nigerian Metropolitan Police officer who started life as a homeless refugee, who gives him a few insights into survival on the street.

“Black people tend to get involved in street crime, it’s more confrontational. Those boys, they are dem lost boys . . . their parents are too poor in time for them . . . working double . . . so when they are teenagers, and they come home, there is no mummy or daddy. So they hug the block.’

“The white community, they are not so daring, but they are more criminal-minded, they do . . . the proper thinking . . . They are coming into the homes with the screwdrivers and the tools and everything.”

In search of the richest and poorest immigrants in the city, Judah explores Nigerian Peckham, Russian Mayfair and Pakistani Leyton.

This was written a few years ago, but it’s still pertinent to life in today’s capital, possibly even more so now than ever before.

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Historied

"This is London": It's Not. Unbalanced but deeply interesting view of London's underside to its prosperity and success

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2016

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This is a stark account of the immigrant under belly of London and gripping, interesting and pretty grim. I have lived in London for nearly half a century, worked in multi racial manufacturing, and know people of many races spread across the north, east, west and south of the city; and none of the London I know is anything like this. And that really is his point in writing it: to uncover what most Londoners don't see, don't understand. The situation of most of the immigrants he covers is pretty depressing, but also in most cases far better than what they would face at home. Hence their willingness to pay a high price to get to the UK. But the cumulative effect if read by someone from the UK provinces or from another country is grossly misleading. The title is inaccurate: this is not London. This is an overlooked desperately poor cross section, with a dash of equally depressing lives rich middle eastern globals and their Filipina maids. This is a book about the bottom 10% and should be labelled as such. And London has been drawing in rural poor for 500 years and their situation has usually been equally dire.

When people in the US or in provincial England read the reviews of this book in the Daily Mail, they have all their worst prejudices confirmed. Ben Judah says he had to see it all for himself; which is worthy but he uses statistics very selectively to make his points and his picture is very unbalanced. Take education: his only reference to it is pretty dire schools where Asian girls are discouraged by their families from working hard at school and some references to gangs in schools. The reality is that over 60% of children in London schools go on to university and London exam results are better than any other region in the country. In the largely immigrant free West of England only 40% of children go on to university. And London has its share of Afro Carribbean and Asian Tiger Mums and Dads driving their kids performance. Asian girls and boys do far better than average working class white boys in school and in university, tragically for the latter. And yes there is crime but half the murder rate of Glasgow which has far fewer immigrants. And I pick these stats in a selective way just like the author but to provide some counter point to his relentless focus on the downside. Best if you go look at the stats yourselves.

Some more stats: 60% of Londoners have university degrees. London generates nearly a quarter of UK GNP with one eighth of its population. 48% of UK growth since the 2008 Crash has been in London. And 55% of Londoners own their own homes, though this is falling because of high prices. And guess what: high prices mean someone can afford to buy the property and someone can afford to pay the rents.

21 people found this helpful

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Karen J. Dahood

Eye Opening Antidote to Nostalgia for London

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2018

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For someone who thinks they are familiar with London this is required reading. Not only does it explain the gradual changes in high street population over the last four decades, but it is a shocking revelation of what is going on behind doors in dilapidated council housing and neglected terraces as well as stylish houses and luxury flats that come with maids and chauffeurs. Russian millionaires guarding their lives, scared Arab boys, and exiled kings of faltering nations all live together in a swirling unreality. Drugs have displaced identity with a vague sense of global society.

4 people found this helpful

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Grim

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2018

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We read this for book club, and found plenty to discuss. What I want to say, as a person who teaches immigrants in the US, is that this book is relentlessly negative and depressing, while my experience with immigrants to the US is that they are almost uniformly optimistic. So it's a little hard for me to tell whether that is a real difference between the US and UK immigrant experience, or whether the mood was colored by the interviewer/author himself.

I felt that the book needed a stronger narrative structure, either following a single person through several stages of immigration and culture shock and adjustment, or talking to people who represent those stages. Or maybe even a geographic organizing principle. It felt random, maybe by intent. After a while, it got tedious.

The book did help me understand why the UK voted for Brexit. On the other hand, London itself voted *against* Brexit, while the rural areas voted for it, so this doesn't really explain that fact at all.

5 people found this helpful

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PChap

Eye opener

Reviewed in France on November 29, 2017

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Splendidly researched, modern day Orwell. This book gives an eye on the wall insight into the vast social changes that have affected London in recent years.

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AA_Basel

Jeder sollte es lesen

Reviewed in Germany on February 19, 2017

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Erster Hand Reportage von Immigraten in globalisiertem London. Ungeschminkt und Hauptnah. Jeder, der ins Ausland arbeiten will, soll es lesen.

One person found this helpful

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Ashok Khanna

Three Stars

Reviewed in India on April 6, 2016

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Highly informative about immigrants. Well written. Could have covered other aspects of London.

Thespionic

A Compulsive Read For those That Love Our Capital

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2016

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I have always lived in the West Country, but from a boy to a man; I have always had a fascination with London. From a paperboy saving his hard earned money, to catch the train up to London to watch the football all over the capital, to visiting London to see the sights or going to the West End to watch a show. I’ve always loved the likes of Covent Garden and Craven Cottage.
I had to read this book … and I loved it. This is what the likes of the day tripper never sees, though we do of course read snatches of it in the papers. This book is much, much more than that. A hundred barrel loads more than that.
It is broken down into 25 London areas; here he discusses the lives of the various immigrant populations, their ways, and their work. The book throws in many eye-watering stats about the disappearing ‘white Brit’ in London and the various migrants that now call Britain their home. Many are here as part of our previous ‘Empire’ but there are now close on 1,000,000 here illegally!
Beautifully written, you find yourself connecting easily with the multitude of interviewees he eases his notes from. The book has a lovely warm, genuine feel. For those who have a very ‘one dimensional attitude’ towards immigrants, you should read every page of this … it will change your view and give you a much more rounded view of their lives, especially their hopes, fears, prejudices… just how bad a lot of their lives really are and how many were conned here by the traffickers?
I found the read absolutely fascinating and absorbing, it is easy to get drawn in by their tales. You feel their warmth, honesty, pain, their apprehension, their battle to simply survive. Yes, there is crime; there are definitely issues by having them here for sure. However, make no mistake, this book implores you look at the bigger picture – would we put up with the life that many of them have to contend with?
Here we read about so many of the races that make up ‘multicultural’ London. We meet: The Roma, a Nigerian Policeman, rich Arabs & Russians, an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan, we meet a multitude of cleaners, Filipino maids, prostitutes, care workers from Africa and a Muslim working in the local morgue to name just a few of quite wonderful characters. We visit the underpasses, the mansions, we ride London buses, meet the cleaners on the underground, there is wealth but plenty of abject poverty too. We visit the bookies and the regular losers, the illegals queueing for building work at dawn outside the builder’s merchants … and all around London, rich and poor, the drugs, drugs, and evermore drugs! Everyone seems to be on drugs and the likes of the Vietnamese skunk dealers are getting very rich.
This book is interesting and diverse, but mostly for me … when you meet some of these characters ... very, very heart-warming and connecting and I loved it. It has given me so much more awareness of how the parts of London that I'm not familiar with function in the twenty first century.

12 people found this helpful

linamar

Excellent reportage

Reviewed in France on March 6, 2016

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Excellente analyse d'une ville cosmopolite des années 2010+. Parfois difficile à lire et un peu trop personnel mais dans l'ensemble un très bon reportage. A quand " This is Paris" ?

One person found this helpful

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