Criminal London: A Sightseer's Guide to the Capital of Crime
Kris Hollington,
Nina Hollington
Like the old saying about rats, in London you’re never more than ten metres from a crime or criminal. Whether it’s a shoplifter or drug dealer, money launderer or murderer, speeding motorist or car thief, hacker or blagger, vandal or burglar, London is packed full of crime.
From the Bermondsey Triangle (so called because many high value objects enter the area never to be seen again) to the alleys of Whitechapel, the streets of the metropolis have played silent witness to countless crimes, from murders born of passion, madness, power or greed, to the awesome amounts of illegal drugs that have arrived everyday for more than a hundred years to feed the insatiable appetite of tens of thousands of recreational users and addicts.
Crime has made London what it is today – in some cases it has even literally built parts of the metropolis. Our fascination with crime has led to the creation of many fictional London-based crime icons, from Sherlock Holmes to Jack Reagan of the Sweeney. Yet there has been no single guide to the capital’s dark side – until now.
Criminal London takes readers on a fascinating tour through the capital’s underworld. As well as five original walks, Criminal London covers the locations of more than a hundred infamous crimes and criminals, covering everything from crime and punishment in Shakespeare’s day to the West End gangs of the 1940’s, to the Great Train Robbery and the Brinks Mat gold bullion robbery, which changed London forever.
This singular guide also covers the birth of modern organised crime, as well as the rise of drug dealing and money laundering, and is illustrated throughout with photographs commissioned for the book, taken by Kris's wife, professional photographer Nina Hollington.
Making use of his experience and contacts on both sides of the law, crime writer and journalist Kris Hollington has created an exciting and original sightseeing guide for the capital’s most intrepid explorers.
Book Details:
- Author: Kris Hollington, , Nina Hollington
- Published Year: 2013
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Rights Sold
- UK: Aurum
Kris Hollington,
Kris Hollington is a bestselling non-fiction author and ghost-writer of twenty books, several of which have been adapted for TV documentaries and dramas.
The Interceptor: The Inside Story of the UK’s Elite Drug Squad, written with former Customs operative Cameron Addicott (Michael Joseph, July 2010) was adapted into an eight-part BBC1 prime-time drama series of the same name and broadcast in the summer of 2015.
Other books by Kris include Hurting Too Much: Shocking Stories From the Frontline of Child Protection, with Detective Sergeant Harry Keeble, (S&S, Feb 2012), a bestsellin...
More about Kris Hollington,
Nina Hollington
Nina Hollington is a London based photographer. She has been commissioned by Eurosport, UK Sport, Aurum Press, Gieves & Hawkes, Purple PR and Westminster Kingsway College amongst others. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, most recently in the Sunday Times Style Magazine.
As well as the photographs for the guide book Criminal London, Nina shot the cover and inside cover for Size Matters Not by Warwick Davis, the autobiography of the star of Ricky Gervais’s and Stephen Merchant’s mocumentary sitcom Life’s Too Short.
Nina is currently working on a...
More about Nina Hollington
Book Reviews
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Surely a sign of a good guide book is that it helps you discover new places and inspires you to visit them. And this being the case, Kris and Nina Hollington’s new tome on Criminal London must be a good one indeed as it’s already spurred the Londonphile to set off to explore a new site. And so this is the book review that turned into a blog post…
Criminal London: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Capital of Crime – to be published on March 14th – is an extensive (336 pages!), well-researched guide to the darker side of London, which is well illustrated with strong photographs (and the odd drawing of sites no longer in existence). "
Londonphile -
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Like some villainous master of disguise, Criminal London by Kris and Nina Hollington is a pocket masterpiece masquerading as an alternative city guide. Don’t dismiss it — this fine book packs more original material than we’ve enjoyed in a long time.... Too many new London guides trot out the same tired old suite of trivia, but the Hollingtons have really done their research, unearthing more nefarious nuggets than you’d find in a Norbury Fried Chicken: serial killers who’ve fallen from public cognizance, the multi-million pound bank jobs you’ve never heard of, and the particularly bloody history of London’s left-luggage offices.... this is an original book, and one that anyone with a passion for the city’s history will greatly enjoy. "
Londonist