Outskirts – Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt

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The Green Belt – a modern mystery of life. It doesn’t appear on maps, it isn’t signposted and it is hard to know where it lies. Green belts prevent urban sprawl from spreading and in this enlightening talk John Grindrod tells of the vision behind their creation, discusses the fiery emotions they stir up and tells a story of growing up there, recounted in his poignant social history Outskirts.

Growing up on ‘the last road in London’ on an estate at the edge of the woods, John Grindrod had a childhood that mirrored these tensions. His family, too, seemed caught between two worlds: a wheelchair-bound mother who glowed in the dark; a father who was traumatised by chicken and was eventually done in by an episode of Only Fools and Horses; two brothers – one sporty, one agoraphobic – and an unremarkable boy on the edge of it all discovering something magical..

John is also is the author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Re-Building of Post War Britain, described as a new way of looking at modern Britain.

Copies of John’s new book will be available to purchase on the night from Newham Bookshop.