I wrote a book called "Crap Towns". It seemed funny at the time

Last week, The Fence magazine ran an article about Crap Towns, a book series I started editing back around the turn of the millennium. Crap Towns was about the worst places in the UK. It was a survey based on nominations from people who wrote into a website - along with a few bits of research, photography and micky-taking that I carried out myself. I hoped it would be a book about the true state of the nation – a ‘domesday book of misery’, as an early critic described it. This car, with its poor damaged face, was left for weeks near my house in Hackney, on my bike route home from work. The Fence generously endorsed this idea by saying that Crap Towns was something that “struck at the real core values of British life: bodged buildings, massive class anxiety and rampant self-loathing.” The author of the article, Adam Steiner, took Crap Towns in the spirit I’d always intended. He described it as an affectionate bit of chiding, an attempt to kick-start conversations about regeneration ... Read full article.