Notebook on Cities and Culture

S4E27: London Rambling with John Rogers


Listen Later

Colin Marshall walks through Stratford, London with John Rogers, author of the blog Lost Byway book This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City. They discuss how one should approach one's first London shopping mall, a built phenomenon that has changed dramatically over the decades; his memories of playing soccer with rotten fruit in the older of Stratford's indoor shopping centers; whether knowing the "other" London requires you to first know the standard London; how "ramble books" got him writing about unwritten-about places; the importance of feeling proud of wherever you live; the unshrinking "London Book" industry, whose robustness possibly owes to the difficulty of pinning the city down; comparisons with Los Angeles, where myths and easy definitions go uncontested; when Leytonstone went from part of Essex to part of London, and what that meant; the historical John Rogers, who got burnt at the stake; what constitutes his walking "practice," which has earned him a reputation as "the drinking man's Iain Sinclair"; the richer connection to the environment you feel when walking, and the aid to thinking it provides; how he first began blogging about his walks, and how the activity took on elements of journalism; his curiosity about London places and place names, and how walking facilitates the accretion of related facts into knowledge; his use of pubs as "third places," and his use of samosas as walking fuel; the Orwellian enjoyment of hardship; and his memories of riding the Docklands Light Railway into the sunset when he first came to town.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Notebook on Cities and CultureBy Colin Marshall

  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8

4.8

123 ratings


More shows like Notebook on Cities and Culture

View all
Bookworm by KCRW

Bookworm

573 Listeners

In Our Time by BBC Radio 4

In Our Time

5,389 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,189 Listeners

The Political Scene | The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

3,945 Listeners

The Tennis Podcast by David Law, Catherine Whitaker, Matt Roberts

The Tennis Podcast

1,381 Listeners

Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,462 Listeners

Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,465 Listeners

The Bill Simmons Podcast by The Ringer

The Bill Simmons Podcast

30,107 Listeners

The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,669 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

111,827 Listeners

The Harper’s Podcast by Harper's Magazine

The Harper’s Podcast

136 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,237 Listeners