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Landor's Tower: or, Imaginary Conversations
Commissioned to write about a disastrous attempt to create an estate around a medieval abbey in Wales, a London writer is sidetracked by a series of bizarre suicides in the secret defense industries, and by witnesses who claim to know the truth about a decades-old murder case. He employs a burned-out media man named Kaporal to research these events, only to find himself accused of murder.
Featuring 20 black-and-white illustrations, Landor's Tower is an intriguing tapestry of fiction, history, and autobiography. "Iain Sinclair is the most inventive novelist of his generation." — Peter Ackroyd
Featuring 20 black-and-white illustrations, Landor's Tower is an intriguing tapestry of fiction, history, and autobiography. "Iain Sinclair is the most inventive novelist of his generation." — Peter Ackroyd
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
2 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Iain Sinclair
120 books342 followersIain Sinclair 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.
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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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 20, 2019
One thing I had learnt, the last person you should ask for a solution is the author. If he knew where he was going, he’d stop dead in his tracks.
Oh Wales, I love thee, though we've barely met. I spent a New Year's Eve there in another life time. It was grand and then my circumstances changed. Hardly on the hoof like one of Sinclair's people, I did not turn to selling used books. That is a pleasant memory if I squint.
Sinclair makes the most of opportunities to lampoon his literary output, his penchant for plotless triptychs. He allows his agent to speak in a stage whisper: enough of London, walk about some other bit. Sinclair's protagonist goes to Wales to research the 19C polymath and crank Walter Savage Landor. Poetic detritus and capricious conversation ensue. Dylan Thomas makes a cameo as does the ghost of Beckett.
Oh Wales, I love thee, though we've barely met. I spent a New Year's Eve there in another life time. It was grand and then my circumstances changed. Hardly on the hoof like one of Sinclair's people, I did not turn to selling used books. That is a pleasant memory if I squint.
Sinclair makes the most of opportunities to lampoon his literary output, his penchant for plotless triptychs. He allows his agent to speak in a stage whisper: enough of London, walk about some other bit. Sinclair's protagonist goes to Wales to research the 19C polymath and crank Walter Savage Landor. Poetic detritus and capricious conversation ensue. Dylan Thomas makes a cameo as does the ghost of Beckett.
July 7, 2011
The writing is incredible, amazing, frenetically gorgeous. The storyline? Meh. I was so excited after the first few pages but then it went all meta on me, the magic of Dryfield and Silverfish were lost . . . there's still plenty here to entertain and provoke and the writing carried it through for me, but I still don't much like books where the author mixes with his characters. It wasn't as clever or studied as Miguel de Unamumo or Italo Calvino, but I still longed for the promise of those first early pages. It also helped that I was just in Wales I think, camping along the canal in the Beacons, hovering around Crickhollow, sad I didn't read this before I went rather than after...
I did love the drawings...they are fantastic. Especially when combined with the character descriptions at the end, I do love 'found documents' I confess.
I did love the drawings...they are fantastic. Especially when combined with the character descriptions at the end, I do love 'found documents' I confess.
Read
April 20, 2018I can't really rate this book because I got out of patience with the plot very quickly and just skipped through to find the bits about Hay - which are extremely well observed, if rather acidic in tone. So, not my glass of tea, but he's clearly a good writer, so I don't want to put anyone off!
Read
June 11, 2021"I was hopeless with faces. I had long since decided that there there were no new people to meet. All strangers were reprints of previously published identities, avatars." - pp 104
July 12, 2015
I got farther than I did the first time I tried to read it! Very Joyce-ean in its rhythms.
I just kinda lost interest when it got to a point in the plot where it became unclear who was real, who was just a dream or fantasy, what situations had atually happened, which were made up in the character’s mind…
Enjoyed it up until that point…and then kept finding myself AVOIDING reading. I mean, given that reading is the thing I’d almost always rather be doing than anything else, if I’m on the bus thinking “well, maybe I’ll just stare out the window instead”, then you’ve got to figure this book maybe isn’t really for me, you know?
I just kinda lost interest when it got to a point in the plot where it became unclear who was real, who was just a dream or fantasy, what situations had atually happened, which were made up in the character’s mind…
Enjoyed it up until that point…and then kept finding myself AVOIDING reading. I mean, given that reading is the thing I’d almost always rather be doing than anything else, if I’m on the bus thinking “well, maybe I’ll just stare out the window instead”, then you’ve got to figure this book maybe isn’t really for me, you know?
May 23, 2019
The wind howls outside but no snow seen since yesterday. If it was yesterday or a day before that when I finished this weird stream of consciousness. Or have I yet read it? Henry Vaughan, his twin Thomas the Alchemist, Herbert, Kilvert, Chatwin, Cordell, Raymond Williams, Dylan Thomas, I all know. A few authors escape me. I have been through piles of books in Hay-on-Wye established by the unnamed "King" who owned the castle where my ancestor was imprisoned. Richard Booth. There, I've named the unnamed. Llanthony, Gospel Pass, Capel-y-ffin, Tretower, Crickhowell, Llansantffraed, the Usk, the Wye, the Valleys. I know the geography as well or better than I know the authors. Left in the rain at the Priory gladly not alone. I'm not as crude as Sinclair but I get it. Light. The Vaughans were all about light. Sinclair gets lost in the dark. Light.
November 4, 2025
Fascinating at times, but extremely difficult and plotless. I was hoping for something more like From Hell or Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor. Maybe this wasn't the best place to start with this author.
September 15, 2011
Confusing with a lot too much reliance on the narrator being crazy to avoid the novel having to make sense but some really good random bollocks in it. One of those books which would be astoundingly good if the author actually had the ability to tie its strands together to unify it rather than relying on hackneyed (pun somewhat intentional) narrative conceits.
June 29, 2007
I got this book signed by Sinclair in the Bristol Artezium. 'There's a scene in this book set here,' he said. 'Oh.' I said.
August 5, 2011
Just started reading this.
Want to read
February 25, 2012Mentioned in Gibson's Distrust That Particular Flavor
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews