The View from the Train

Reviews / Votes

An enigmatic, intermittently brilliant collection of essays about the built landscape of Britain and how it has changed in the last 30 years. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian * Keiller is Britain's most observant and provocative film-maker around the subject of cities and the landscape. In these wonderful essays, he explores the political and cultural forces behind how the UK looks. -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times * Perceptive, educated, un-obvious musings on place and inhabitation. -- Rowan Moore * Observer * An essayist of stylish rigour on urban planning, architectural decay and the vast culturally occluded material infrastructure that subtends daily life in Britain. -- Brian Dillon * Guardian * The View from the Train often delights with its sly, impish wit and observation [...] By turns earnest and entertaining, opens a window onto Britain's uncharted, off-piste lands and their haunted past. -- Ian Thomson * Independent * Droll, analytical, and quietly furious. -- Sukhdev Sandhu * Icon * Our most original geographical and political thinker. -- Owen Hatherley * Guardian * Patrick Keiller is Britain's foremost film essayist, part historian, part poet, part landscape photographer. -- Nina Power An enlightening and stimulating companion to his films. Keiller is a masterful observer. [.] His learned account of the earliest film panoramas filmed from trains is that of a man in love with the history and technique of cinema. He looks at urban buildings with a coldly original vision. * Irish Times *