Mother London

By: Michael Moorcock

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, award-winning author of the Elric series Michael Moorcock offers a captivating and immersive portrait of London from World War II through the 1980s through the eyes of three outpatients from a mental hospital.

In this masterful exploration of the human condition, three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, reclusive writer, and a woman just awoken from a long coma—experience the history of London from the Blitz to the late 1980s through a chaotic experience of sensory delusions. Believing themselves to hear voices from London’s past, their fragmented and poignant stories create a tapestry of episodes, snippets, and sidelines that capture the essence of those living on society’s fringes.

What The Guardian calls “a great, humane document,” Mother London is a literary work that transcends time and place and is a must-read for literary and historical fiction fans alike.

Critic reviews

"Nicholas Boulton’s dignified English voice sets the stage for this novel about several mental hospital outpatients who are experiencing various aspects of life in London in the period from WWII to the 1980s. Golden Voice Boulton’s narration is descriptive and employs various emotions when needed, such as gravitas for the bombings of London in the 1940s...The story is alternatively imaginative, delusional, incoherent, and out of context as the characters live inside their own minds, stringing together stream-of-consciousness thoughts to dramatic effect."

Not his best

I love London and my family had lived there for 300 years but I could not quite pick up the tempo of Moorcocks characters.