Show Me the Bodies: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023

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There are seances, secret handshakes, shootouts, car chases, stakeouts, exploding caravans and blackmail plots. Rather than responding to Daffarn’s concerns, the council looked into whether it could bring libel proceedings against him.

The Grenfell inquiry judge, Martin Moore-Bick, has written that the use of aluminium composite material cladding, plus combustible insulation – some of which had been subject to rigged fire tests – were central to the fire’s spread. An ideological commitment to deregulation, lax standards, and cuts to local government enforcement and maintenance powers mean that British buildings are not presently good enough for this strategy to be the only approach. After a similar fire at Lakanal House in south London killed six people in 2009, this policy should have been reviewed.

A magnificent book that deftly combines vivid, compelling accounts of the victims of the fire with forensic (but no less engaging) detail on the decades of politics and policy which led up to it. Peter Apps has shown the care, humanity and attention to detail that were lethally lacking among those with the power and responsibility to keep the residents of Grenfell safe. Justice and change still feels like a long way off but those that relentlessly lobby for change inspire hope for the future.

Hillinghead is an honest copper with hidden desires, whose life is soon derailed in the wake of his discovery. Then, if you teach, add it your students’ reading list, if you work in an office, lend it to your colleagues.It has since become a cliché for Conservative-led governments to promise a “bonfire” of regulations – a bleakly fitting metaphor, if you follow how Apps traces Grenfell back to these decisions. Unsuprisingly no-one come out of this well, the government, the companies involved, the fire service, deregulation. It was high time Netflix came for its slice of the quantum physical pie, and Bodies is more than able to keep up with the pack. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs.