The London geographies in Colin MacInness’ Mr Love and Justice overlap some of my own much loved parts of London in interesting ways. I quite enjoyed the book, especially as it steadily grew more complicated and took its interesting turns. But my little urbanist heart proper stopped a couple of times as he describes architecture and place in rather brilliant ways. And wrestling.

I never lived in North London, but one of my favourite people lives in Kilburn. I’ve always loved it up there. This description of it fascinates, especially given how many new layers (pretty antithetical to coppers) have been added to these streets. Though I wonder if it isn’t returning to its middle class heyday.

Examining the area, Edward liked it. There is about Kilburn a sort of faded respectability, of self-righteous drabness, that appealed to him. For the true copper’s dominant characteristic, if the truth be known, is neither those daring nor vicious qualities that are some times attributed to him by friend or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, an almost desperate love of the conventional. It is untidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copper disapproves of most of all: far more, even, than of crime, which is merely a professional matter. Hence his profound dislike of people loitering in streets, dressing extravagantly, speaking with exotic accents, being strange, weak, eccentric or simply any rare minority-of their doing, in short, anything that cannot be safely predicted.

Continue reading The faded respectability and self-righteous drabness of Kilburn: Mr Love and Justice →