** This event is now SOLD OUT! A waitlist is in operation, please do register and we will contact you should a space become available **
The London Society is pleased to announce that this year’s annual Banister Fletcher Lecture will be given by Robert Elms, writer and broadcaster. Elms was a writer for The Face magazine in the 1980s and is currently known for his long-running radio show on BBC Radio London.
“The poor, the marginal, the young, the creative and the bohemian are the lifeblood of urban life, but they are being excluded, expelled, exiled from our great urban centres by the process of making everything luxury, exclusive, designed and desirable.
We must desist from ‘developing’ every area to within an inch of its life; Kings Cross, once a dangerous wonderland is now a chic but sterile designer mall. Punk once happened on the Kings Road. Pushing people to the periphery, like in Paris, is disastrous for the health of a city which is hollowed out.
Cities need areas of arrival, they need slums, where people from all around the world and all classes can settle and start their journey. Notting Hill, Spitalfields, Camden Town, Brixton, these were all considered ‘slums’ in living memory but are now gentrified and atrophied by affluence.”
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