Grenfell didn’t have to happen.
Peter Apps is an award-winning journalist and Deputy Editor at Inside Housing. He broke a story on the dangers of combustible cladding thirty-four days before the Grenfell Fire. He has not stopped reporting on this national tragedy since, and his coverage of the public inquiry has received widespread acclaim. He lives in London.
'Show Me the Bodies is a clear, moving and powerful account of
Britain’s worst fire since the second world war, written by someone
who knows what he’s talking about… Never before, in years of
reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This
one did.' —Rowan Moore, Observer Book of the Week
'Show Me the Bodies will never leave the mind of anyone who reads
it. The tragedy is that those who should read it probably won’t.'
—Guardian
'A searing indictment of the construction industry and regulators…
The book that follows reads like a prosecution, meticulous and
fierce.' —The Times
'A meticulous study of the Grenfell disaster and subsequent
inquiry… a powerful reminder that management is not just about
managing resources but managing people’s lives.' —Martha Lane Fox,
The Sunday Times
'A jaw-dropping account of a callous system that swept individual
conscience aside in favour of profit and politics. It is hard to
convey how moving and enraging the book is — I urge you to read it
for yourself. Because one thing almost all of us have been guilty
of since the worst disaster in the UK this century is complacency.'
—Evening Standard
'At first, it was easy to write about Grenfell… Soon, it was
dizzyingly hard: a web of technical intricacy, overlapping safety
codes and multisyllabic plastic types – all against the fraught
backdrop of a police investigation and judge-led inquiry. In his
insistence on weaving through such legal pitfalls, Apps stands
almost alone… He is one of the only writers beyond the west London
community to chronicle the joys of living in Grenfell Tower…
A forensic examination of how building regulations and
corporate safety standards have been watered down since Margaret
Thatcher’s deregulation bonanza.' —New Statesman, Book of the
Day
'Apps writes that Grenfell “tells us something about… the priority
our political and economic system places on human life—especially
when those lives are likely to be poor, immigrant and from ethnic
minority backgrounds.” He has done their stories justice with this
urgent book.' —Prospect
'However painful the story of Grenfell is, it is one we must hear.
Apps' powerful testament tells us how injustice was manifested and
how lessons still fail to be learned.' —David Lammy MP
'For the last few years, Peter Apps has been writing the most
important reportage on the most important disaster in this country
since Hillsborough. Here, he makes clear how this atrocity was
easily preventable. Show Me the Bodies also reveals just how little
those responsible, from the construction industry to the
government, have learned. Whatever the courts eventually decide,
this book deserves to be widely read so that the rest of us can
finally hold them to account.' —Owen Hatherley, author of The
Ministry of Nostalgia
'Show Me the Bodies is a staggering achievement, both a
testament to the victims, the bereaved and the
community of Grenfell and a painstaking, forensic
investigation into the causes of the crime itself. Yet it is
also an unflinching portrait of UKplc: a divided, deregulated,
privatized and neglected kingdom where profit for the few always
triumphs over the health, safety and lives of the many, where the
victims are always left voiceless, and where the dead never find
justice or peace. And where, most damningly of all, we still
choose not to act and so still let crimes such as Grenfell happen,
over and over, again and again. In short, this is the most
harrowing, moving, powerful and important book of the year, and one
which every citizen should read. And remember. And learn from
and then act upon.' David Peace, author of the Red Riding
Quartet
'Enormously important… A painstaking chronicle of an entirely
avoidable tragedy, its aftermath and its causes.' —James O'Brien,
LBC
'A harrowing account of the fire itself and a searing indictment of
the society that allowed it to happen.' —Financial Times
‘Compelling, rigorous, utterly forensic and so very needed. This
book has to be the moment that things change.' —Lucy Easthope,
author of When the Dust Settles
'Working from painstaking daily reporting from the inquiry,
alongside extensive interviews with the bereaved and survivors of
the Grenfell atrocity, Apps has written a concise, devastatingly
detailed and upsetting book. This should be a required text for
anyone involved in the built environment. From architects to
politicians, all decision makers should read Show Me the Bodies.
Then effect change.' —Emma Dent Coad, former MP for Kensington
'The most powerful book I have read in years. Compassionate,
forensic, heart breaking and enraging on almost every single page.'
—Eoin Ó Broin, Sinn Fein T.D. for Dub Mid-West
'This book is a vital work of public service. 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. We cannot afford to ignore its
lessons.' —Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates
'Peter Apps has written a searing indictment of what he rightly
calls "the most serious crime committed on British soil this
century" in this forensic account of the deregulation, cost-cutting
and sheer negligence behind the Grenfell fire and its human cost.
It’s essential reading if we are to avoid such needless tragedy in
the future.' —John Boughton, author of Municipal Dreams
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