Iain Sinclair: Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire - A Confidential Report

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair’s personal record of the area of London where he has lived for forty years. Seeking to capture the spirit of Hackney, Iain meets a cast of the dispossessed and uncovers traces of those who passed through Hackney including Lenin, Stalin, Joseph Conrad and Orson Welles. He also tells his own story of forty years in one house — marriage, children, strange encounters, deaths.

Iain and his panel of East London luminaries, Sheila Rowbotham, Rachel Lichtenstein, Patrick Wright and Michael Rosen, discuss Iain’s latest publication and his examination of a borough that has been persistently revived, reinvented and betrayed.

 

Iain Sinclair is a writer, poet and film-maker and widely regarded as one of London’s greatest chroniclers. His many books include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award), Lights Out for the Territory, Rodinsky’s Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein) and London Orbital. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.