This is London: Life and Death in the World City

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But rescuing us – if just for a little while – from the sour misanthropy which Ben’s book is, admittedly, wont to foster comes a (Polish) registrar, who waxes lyrical about the weddings she has officiated : A chronicle of the capital so incisively up-to-date it is disconcerting, invigorating, and depressing all at once . . . Judah allows the new Londoners to speak for themselves and, in so doing, shines a light on the dark corners of the city -- Lilian Pizzichini * Mail on Sunday * Xinjiang: Taming China's Wild West | Standpoint". Archived from the original on 9 March 2016 . Retrieved 19 February 2016. Judah, Ben (2 February 2017). "Exclusive interview: Emmanuel Macron on Brexit, le Pen and the teacher who became his wife". The Sunday Times . Retrieved 25 June 2022.

Ben Judah, 27". Forbes. 18 January 2016. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019 . Retrieved 20 November 2020.

Summary

The man fleeing his country, losing his wife and daughter on the way, ending up in France with his son. This is London: Life and Death in the World City starts without a shred of pretence, and follows with an equally unembellished tour of modern London. The author, Ben Judah, sought first-hand experience of the city, and his encounters alternate between the surreal and the harrowing.

Others have pointed out the issues with his prose style and they are correct. His constant attempts at metaphor and simile are both unnecessary and unsuccessful.

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As Ben flits round the vast metropolis, his flowing tide of (in general) pretty unhappy interviewees can begin to sound like William Blake Tismaneanu, Vladimir (May 2014). "Reviewed Work: Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin by Ben Judah". International Affairs. 90 (3): 725–727. People say Ben Judah is Orwellian. They're Right. . . . He's a superb reporter. -- William Leith * Evening Standard * Ben Judah (born 1988) is a Franco-British [1] journalist and the author of This Is London and Fragile Empire. Servicing this infrastructure is an every increasing number of illegal or underpaid migrants who, along with the average working class British individual, are forced to live in increasingly squalid conditions owing to the government's ideological indifference to the failure of its precious "market" to provide decent accommodation for the average citizen.

While Judah would doubtless be alarmed by the comparison, it’s notable that a number of those he documents, in particular migrants themselves, complain about the migrants they encounter – whom they characterise as immoral or criminal.Some of the early chapters are really good and suggested a great deal of promise, despite others being weaker. Sadly however the better chapters became less and less frequent. It was hard to tell what Judah's point was, not just in what was being said (fair enough the stories could and should be very different) but often what was happening just seemed to belong to a different book. I was waiting for him to come to the point, for this avenue to lead to something but they never did. The first two sentences of the book are “I have to see everything for myself. I don’t trust statistics”. Fair enough, although the author does quote some statistics, the most significant being that between the census dates of 1971 and 2011, the population of London identifying as “White British” fell from 86% to 45%, a trend that is only going to continue. It’s in that context that author Ben Judah paints us a picture of London’s recent migrants, told largely through their own words. There have always been people to complain that London is losing its identity, that it is being overrun. In 1185 Richard of Devizes suggested: “I do not at all like that city. All sorts of men crowd there from every country under the heavens. Each brings its own vices and its own customs.” In 1255 a monk with the unlikely name of Matthew Paris remarked that London was “overflowing” with “Poitevins, Provençals, Italians and Spaniards”. In the 15th century certain splenetic commentators were railing against Flemish, Danish, German and Dutch arrivals; Icelanders, commonly employed as servants, were viewed as an underclass. In a series of vivid but always empathetic portraits of other people’s lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom.