Iain Sinclair

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born

June 11, 1943 in Cardiff, Wales, The United Kingdom

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Literature & Fiction

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Iain Sinclair (born 11 June 1943 in Cardiff, Wales) is a British writer and film maker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.

Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).

His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as c...more Iain Sinclair (born 11 June 1943 in Cardiff, Wales) is a British writer and film maker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.

Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).

His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.

His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).

Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.

One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.

Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.

In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.

Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.

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Average rating: 3.69 · 878 ratings · 125 reviews · 55 distinct works

	London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 3.56 avg rating — 145 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London by Iain Sinclair, Marc ATKINS (Illustrator) 4.03 avg rating — 95 ratings — published 1997 — 5 editions	My rating:
	White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings 3.81 avg rating — 68 ratings — published 1987 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire 3.75 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2010 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Downriver 3.67 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 1991 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Iain Sinclair, Dave McKean (Illustrator) 3.32 avg rating — 50 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	London: City of Disappearances by Iain Sinclair (Editor), Stewart Home (Goodreads Author) (contributor), Brian Catling (contributor) 3.41 avg rating — 41 ratings — published 2008 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Dining on Stones 2.80 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 2004 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Radon Daughters by Iain Sinclair, Ian Sinclair 3.95 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1994 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge 3.77 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2001 — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Iain Sinclair

“Men of the cloth live in this monologue, it is their due: nobody talks back to a pulpit.”
― Iain Sinclair, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

2 people liked it

“You can be so much in a room that the world outside turns to water. You've got the heater blowing out burnt air, but you still don't get warm. Your ankles are singed, but your head's in a bucket of ice. Time drips like a stalactite. The water for the coffee boils away in a tree of steam.”
― Iain Sinclair, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

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2 people liked it

“All kinds of weird stuff going down, whisperings in corners, significant matches struck and blown out. The whores, unoccupied, were drinking heavily. The police, occupied were drinking even more heavily. The grass in the corner wanted to drink most heavily, but lacked the poke.”
― Iain Sinclair, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

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The Book Challenge: Stephanie's 2009 Book Challenge - Finished (almost)	7	171	Dec 31, 2009 10:13am

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Iain Sinclair

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