Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden
Rachel Lichtenstein
Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden
Hatton Garden is one of the most secret streets in England, home for two centuries to a deeply private working community of diamond and jewellery dealers. Intimately connected to the area both personally (her family run a jewellery business there) and professionally (as an artist archivist of London's streets), Rachel Lichtenstein is uniquely placed to explore the extraordinary history of this mysterious quarter, with its ancient burial sites, diamond workshops, underground vaults, subterranean rivers, monastic dynasties and forgotten palaces. Moving beyond the street itself into parts of Clerkenwell, Holborn and Farringdon, Rachel follows the ancient perimeter of the original Hatton Garden estate, which once bordered the lost River Fleet. Guided on her walks by archaeologists, sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, geologists and visionaries of the city such as Iain Sinclair, she crosses the same territory repeatedly, gathering new layers of the story with each journey.
3.9 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
History |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
368 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
June 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0241142875 |
| Publisher |
Hamish Hamilton |
| |
Hatton Garden is one of the most secret streets in England, home for two centuries to a deeply private working community of diamond and jewellery dealers. Intimately connected to the area both personally (her family run a jewellery business there) and professionally (as an artist archivist of London's streets), Rachel Lichtenstein is uniquely placed to explore the extraordinary history of this mysterious quarter, with its ancient burial sites, diamond workshops, underground vaults, subterranean rivers, monastic dynasties and forgotten palaces. Moving beyond the street itself into parts of Clerkenwell, Holborn and Farringdon, Rachel follows the ancient perimeter of the original Hatton Garden estate, which once bordered the lost River Fleet. Guided on her walks by archaeologists, sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, geologists and visionaries of the city such as Iain Sinclair, she crosses the same territory repeatedly, gathering new layers of the story with each journey.
"Paved with gold" | Rachel Lichtenstein | New Statesman
Reviews
The Sunday Times
Miranda Seymour
“As in her previous and equally successful ventures into recent London history ... Lichtenstein proves to be both an indefatigable explorer and a skilled interviewer of people not in the habit of sharing their life-stories ... [A] splendid book”
10/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Observer
The Gentle Author
“As soon as I reached the last page of Rachel Lichtenstein's book, I wanted to go to Ray Street at the boundary of Clerkenwell and Hatton Garden — in the place once known as Little Italy — where in the middle of the road is a manhole cover through which you can hear the sound of the mythic Fleet river, which still flows beneath this part of London. This book gave me the hunger to hear it for myself and take consolation that primeval forces still exist beneath our modern city ... It is an overwhelming trove of stories with a multiplicity of facets to intrigue.”
24/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Independent
Lucy Popescu
“Lichtenstein is an artist, writer, local historian and archivist, and her multi-faceted approach makes fascinating reading ... Diamond Street is the second in Lichtenstein's trilogy of books on London streets, building on the much acclaimed On Brick Lane; a volume on Portobello Road is to follow. Among her many talents is her ability to make us look with a fresh eye at familiar urban spaces.”
24/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Times
Linda Grant
“Through talking to its many characters, Lichtenstein has brought alive something of London that is so taken for granted by its inhabitants that we are unaware of how mysterious and fascinating it is — how one street can be a kind of Tardis, a portal to another world of parallel commerce, codes, rituals, history. This is a heartfelt book full of curiosity and love for its subject.”
19/05/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Sukhdev Sandhu
“[A] fascinating and much-needed account. The longer Diamond Street goes on, the greater the tension between Lichtenstein's preferred mode of writing — polite, research recounted in the tone of extended journal entry — and more experimental approaches that include getting American artist Mary Flanagan to use Google Street View to conduct a hybrid of digital flanerie and cyber séance on Hatton Garden.”
16/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Philippa Stockley
“Lichtenstein, a sculptor rather than a historian, presents her informative book in a rather baggy first-person style that veers towards picaresque. This must be seen as part of its character. However, one hopes that the error of calling the important 17th-century engraver Wenceslaus Hollar (whose splendid British Library-held engraving of the Priory of St John the author vaguely refers to) “a Flemish Artist and Mapmaker called Holler [sic]”, which someone should have spotted, along with a few typos including once in Isadore Mitziman’s name, are flaws that might be corrected in any future edition.”
02/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Sunday Telegraph
Jonathan Sale
“As a writer, she is something of a rough diamond and her editors ought to have chipped away at the often lacklustre material on the periphery of her tape-recorded encounters with interviewees. However, once her experts and veterans got into their stride, they sparkled as they demonstrated how the wealth of the area lay in its people as well as its products.”
13/06/2012
Read Full Review