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King of the City
Michael Moorcock
Scribner hardback, 423 pages, £16.99
Also trade paperback and regular paperback
Review by John Coulthart (2000)

It wouldn’t be exaggeration to compare this extraordinarily rich book to Dickens, Balzac or even Andrei Biely, author of St. Petersburg. These were writers who took the dizzying tapestry of metropolis life for their canvas, its cast of thousands and blend of high drama and low; now Michael Moorcock has set himself among his great forbears once again with one of his favourite subjects, London.

His earlier Mother London, considered by many to be his masterpiece, showed the density of the city’s history, stories and lives piled in endless layers (quite literally when it came to the scenes in the Blitz). King of the City by comparison shows us the noise and energy of the surface, the capital as a hustling, vibrant universe-in-miniature, a place of spivs, chancers, racketeers, careerists and, in the background, ordinary people trying to get through life the best they can. 

The book follows the exploits of Denny Dover from his childhood in the bomb-ruined back streets through the city’s Swinging heyday in the sixties to his rise as a leading paparazzo in the eighties and nineties, when the spivs had names like Murdoch, Maxwell and Thatcher (all embodied here in the sinister figure of Sir John Barbican Begg, another of the author’s great, memorable villains). Art (well, rock music . . .), culture and politics all blend together in a heady, gumbo-like brew. Like the classic novels of old, this book has an epic sweep, covering a span of fifty years (the same span as the author’s amazing career) and seeking to encompass all that’s worth communicating about what, these days, seems to be the only city worth writing about. As one of Dover’s employers might put it, ‘All human life is here’.

This book casts a giant shadow, shows up the ambitions of Moorcock’s over-praised contemporaries as small and mean and lacking any connection with real humanity. While others are concerned with literary games Moorcock’s concern is with writing great books. This is a great book. Long live the King.

The Edge’s Michael Moorcock pages