Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 65: London: the lives of the city
Spring 1999
‘Let us commend to you the London Granta . . . with a fabulously impressive list of writers.’ The Guardian. Julian Barnes, Ian Buruma, Amit Chaudhuri, Ruth Gershon, Philip Hensher, Hanif Kureishi, John Lanchester, Doris Lessing, Penelope Lively, Albino Ochero-Okello, Ian Parker, Dale Peck, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Graham Swift and more; Soho in photographs by Stephen Gill, and subversive maps of literary London by cartoonist Martin Rowson.
From this Issue
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Arrival
Albino Ochero-Okello
‘As I stood in front of the immigration officer, I was already worrying about my answers to the questions he might ask’.
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The Law of Diminishing Returns
Dale Peck
‘Love is like trash: it's not something you hoard, it's merely something you don't waste, like heat, or water, or paper’.
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Anthony Bailey | A London View
Anthony Bailey
I come from a generation which still, fifty-odd years on, looks up and once in a while thinks, 'Good, one of ours.'
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Howard Hodgkin | A London View
Howard Hodgkin
Interior views are certainly more comfortable to look at than those outside.
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The Man in The Van
Lucretia Stewart
‘On Friday 20 March 1998 at ten-thirty in the morning I was lying in the bath, washing my hair’.
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Cash is King
John Lanchester
Mr Phillips is lying face down on the floor of Barclays Bank.
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Julian Barnes | A London View
Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes shares a view of London from his childhood.
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With a Bang
Helen Simpson
‘There had been an unbelievable amount of talk about the weather, not to mention the end of the world and so on’.
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The Umbrella
Hanif Kureishi
‘If there were a thousand umbrellas there I would not give you one.’
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David Sylvester | A London View
David Sylvester
‘When you turn your back on the view, you're face to face with the Western Pumping Station across the street and its campanile-like tower.’
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To Feed the Night
Philip Hensher
‘They lived in London at the end of the nineteen eighties.’
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Dame Shirley
Jay Rayner
Dame Shirley Porter would not agree to talk in her flat in Israel, overlooking the...
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Sohoitis
Ian Hamilton
What brings me to this place, this pass? It’s four-fifteen in the afternoon on Charlotte...
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Penelope Lively | A London View
Penelope Lively
A cat walks across the empty tarmac of the yard. The place is once more local and domestic.
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The Prince and I
Ferdinand Dennis
My long and ambivalent relationship with the Albert Memorial started soon after I was brought...
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Jenny Uglow | A London View
Jenny Uglow
My favourite view is just a sudden vertical glimpse. It’s the drear end of November...
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Churchill’s Cigar
Ian Buruma
It was in 1960, or possibly 1961, at any rate before the first Beatles LP,...
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Fishing, Writing and Ted: An Appreciation
Graham Swift
‘Sometimes it haunts you like a knell, sometimes it's the motto for unimagined privilege.’
