My Old, Sweet, Darling Mob 
Iain Sinclair
- King of the City by Michael Moorcock
- Mother London by Michael Moorcock
Around the time of the London mayoral election, that stupendous non-event in the calendar of civic discourse, posters appeared out of nowhere with the head of a man who wasn’t quite Frank Dobson. There was nothing peevish or pop-eyed about this citizen. The shirt was open-necked. The tilted look was watchful, eyes narrowed against bright light: a non-combatant shocked to find himself exposed on the hustings. No Londoner, according to the spin-doctors, is ever going to vote for a beard. The candidate, a Father Christmas in civvies, knows that better than anyone, knows he’s on a loser, but it hasn’t dowsed his fire. Actually, this fly-pitched outlaw, spotted on the side of a telephone junction box outside Toynbee Hall, on Commercial Street in Whitechapel, had been got up to look like a charity case, or a Wanted poster. Dead or alive. ‘Vote Michael Moorcock’, it said. ‘King of the City’.
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Iain Sinclair’s anthology London: City of Disappearances appeared last year. Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire, a documentary fiction, will come out in 2009.
Other articles by this contributor:
Museums of Melancholy · Silence on the Euston Road
Hopi Mean Time · Jim Sallis
All change. This train is cancelled · Iain Sinclair tries to get to the Dome
The Olympics Scam · The Razing of East London
In Hackney · Steve Dilworth
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